Jared Diamond on How Geography Affects our Globalized World Today | Upfront Summit 2020

good morning the title of my talk today is one that begs a yes answer which I'll show you is wrong is geography increasingly irrelevant in our globalized world and you may be inclined to say of course it is don't the internet cell phones and jet plane travel now connect everybody to everybody else and make geography irrelevant so it makes no difference whether you live in Silicon Valley or in the Central African Republic and the real answer is no of course not that's nonsense you need money in order to be able to afford a computer or a cell phone or a jet plane trek ticket but money is distributed unevenly around the world proportionately far more people in Silicon Valley than in the Central African Republic can't afford a computer a cell phone or a jet plane ticket first world countries are on the average 32 times richer than poor countries and the richest countries like looks levorg are 200 times richer per capita than is the Central African Republic why what are the reasons for these big differences in national wealth the big part of the answer is geography here's a homework assignment for you or it's something that you can easily do to convince yourself just pull up on your computer a map of Africa and write down on the map of Africa the per capita the wealth of each country either GDP per capita or income per capita corrected or not corrected for differences in purchasing power any measure you want of per capita wealth you will see that Africa is like a Big Mac in the distribution of wealth there's a thin slice on top the five countries in the North temperate zone there's a thin slice on the bottom the five countries in the South temperate zone those countries are relatively rich and all the countries in the middle the center of the Big Mac all the tropical countries in Africa are relatively poor those ten temperate countries either north and south most of them are richer than almost any of the tropical countries in the center what's the reason for those big differences in wealth around Africa what's what's the matter with being in the tropics well the tropics bring three big disadvantages one disadvantage is tropical agriculture one has the fantasy that in the tropics it's easy to get food bananas fall off the trees no that's not true tropical agriculture is on the average about half as productive as temperate zone agriculture and that's because tropical soils are thin and infertile and in the tropics there are lots of pests year-round pests insects and worms that destroy much of the crops so tropical agriculture is a disadvantage tropical diseases are an obvious disadvantage tropical diseases are not only sad for all the people dying of those tropical diseases but they're also bad for the economy tropical diseases mean a short lifespan in the tropics many African tropical countries have a lifespan of 50 years instead of 80 years but if you're trained engineer trained at the age of 30 is going to die at age 50 there's only 20 years to contribute to the workforce instead of 4050 years another disadvantage of those tropical diseases is that when you're alive you're still out sick much of the time and not working women are pregnant or lactating much of the time and can't join the workforce because they're constantly churning out babies to make up for the babies who are going to die and there's a low ratio of productive adults to non-working children and then the third reason for this advantage of the tropics is the breakdown of machinery at high temperatures in the tropics that disadvantage being at warm temperatures one can see within countries that span a lot of latitude in Brazil is the cool temperate zone and the south that's richer than the tropics in the north and that used to be the case in the United States as well so that's one thing that you can see from your nap of Africa and you can easily convince yourselves but there's another thing that you'll see from your map of Africa of 48 African countries there are 33 that are on the Seacoast and one amazing and one that's on a on a navigable river but there are 15 landlocked tropical countries 15 countries that do not have access to the sea and or not on a navigable river being landlocked is a big disadvantage for those 15 countries like Zambia and Central African Republic in the middle of Africa because transport by sea per ton and per mile is 7 times cheaper than transport by land so being landlocked is a big disadvantage well you may there's more homework for you something that will convince you even more quickly take the take the map of South America South America is simple because there were only 12 countries in South America and lo and behold the three countries in the temperate zones Argentina Uruguay and Chile are richer than any of the nine other countries in South America which are in the tropics in the temperate zones even Argentina famous for its bad government if you are in Argentina which has half of its area as the pampas the wonderfully fertile pampas so productive for grain and for cattle if you're in Argentina with the pampas even a inefficient government can't prevent your country from becoming rich but there's one other thing that you can see from your nap of South America I told you about the disadvantage of being landlocked in Africa in South America there's only one landlocked country that's Bolivia and lo and behold not surprisingly the live the poorest country in South America all those and disadvantages of being in the of being in the tropics and of being landlocked their consequences of geography naturally there are other factors that also affect national wealth but geography is one of the big factors one can wonder does that mean that the situation for tropical countries is hopeless and that they should give up on ever achieving wealth no it's just as with human illness if you are ill you go to the doctor you get a diagnosis the doctor once you are ill that doesn't mean that you're bound to die the diagnosis tells you what medicine or what cure you can take and similarly being in the tropics you can get a diagnosis there are things that you can do and the things you should not do in order to get rich in the tropics don't base your economy on agriculture the tropical countries that have become rich most spectacularly Singapore Malaysia and Costa Rica have learned get their money in ways other front than from agriculture if you're in the tropics do invest in public health Singapore Thailand and Botswana did it most spectacularly Singapore that eliminated malaria and it's now by far the richest tropical country in the world if you are in the tropics leave the exploitation of agricultural products to temperate zone countries like US Canada Netherlands and Argentina well one might say so what if those tropical countries are poor that's very sad and saw their own fault anyway but start a problem for us here in Emperor's own countries sixty years ago having poor countries out there was not a problem for rich countries because the world wasn't globalized but today the world is globalized and it is a problem having poor countries out there poor tropical countries for at least three reasons one reason is the spread of tropical diseases from poor tropical countries with low public health budgets two rich temperate zone countries on jet planes a famous example was one oughtn't one year of Linnaeus our and Tina's flight that stopped in Peru picked up food in Peru the food was contaminated with cholera the plane went on to Los Angeles and passengers from LA connected on to San Francisco Seattle Fairbanks and Tokyo and that one airplane flight left a string of cholera cases from Los Angeles to San Francisco to Seattle to Fairbanks to Tokyo spread of tropical diseases on jet planes nowadays other words tropical diseases that are spread on jet planes include most notably aids and Ebola Marburg dengue chikungunya fever but climate change nowadays means that these tropical diseases risk getting established thanks to a jet plane flight in temperate zone countries and it's happening now with coronavirus from China a second reason why those poor tropical countries are a problem for temperate zone countries today is support for international terrorism by desperately poor populations and in tropical countries that knows that that know that there's not a reasonable chance in their lifetime or the lifetime of their children that they're going to get rich and then then the third problem that tropical countries poor tropical countries pose for temperate zone countries is unstoppable emigration by people who are going to leave and that's especially a problem in Europe which is face to face with Africa with 1 billion people almost all of whom would be better off if they were in Europe and they know it so wealth theories with geography what else is that that varies with geography besides wealth another thing is climate change well you know that climate change means that the world is getting hotter drier and lower agricultural productivity that's true on the average but there are differences with geography there are some parts of the world that paradox we are getting cooler like the southeast in the United States while most of the world including us here in California are getting warmer agricultural production in general is declining with climate change and that's happening here in California but agricultural production is rising in Canada Sweden and Britain thanks to climate change Sweden and Britain are now producing wine that was not the case when I lived in Britain 60 years ago and I can tell you that this new British wine it's not bad thanks to climate change fire hazards are on the average increasing around the world thanks to climate change we know it now in California and any of you from Australia know it even more in Australia but fire hazards are not a consideration in Alabama so climate change varies around the world another thing that varies around the world is resource problems resource problems vary with geography some countries are resource poor and other countries are resource rich for Geographic reasons the Japanese often say our country is poor in resources and relatively speaking that's true on the other hand Zambia and Iceland are rich in resources especially rich in hydroelectric power Zambian Iceland produced so much electricity from hydroelectric power that they make money by their electricity they don't need it all Zambia exports and sells electricity to South Africa and Iceland has so much hydroelectric power and geothermal power that it wants to do something to get money with all that extra excess power and the Icelanders lid on the solution of aluminum there isn't aluminum and Iceland but they import aluminium and they use all their electricity to smelt aluminum and aluminum is the biggest money earner the biggest foreign exchange earner of ice but resource problems are going to increase around the world as the number of people around the world increases and as average consumption rates per person increase around the world that rise in resource consumption in a world finite resources means that we are going to see more and more resource scrambles fights or competition for resources a resource scramble was the background reason was the background cause for Japan's entering World War two I just came back from two trips to Japan where I went to the Japanese Imperial War Museum and it's they're explicitly the cause of World War two being Japan's search for over acquisition scramble for overseas resources resource scrambles today aren't especially significant for seafood and believe it or not freshwater you might say why on earth is the earth resource scramble for freshwater when we can just make fresh water from saltwater yes in theory and in practice you can make fresh water from saltwater but that requires fuel which reduce releases carbon into the atmosphere so you don't want to make much freshwater from salt water because that requires fuel unutilized fresh water today something like 85% of the world's freshwater is already been utilized the onion lies fresh water is unutilized because it's in remote places notably northwestern Australia and Siberia and there are good reasons why reasons of access that we're not using that little fresh water left a scramble for fresh water that's growing and perhaps the most serious impending scramble for fresh water is with the melting of the Himalayan ice cap but the Himalayan glaciers they provide the water for the big rivers of Southeast Asia the Mekong and the Brahmaputra and the Ganges and so on and particularly dams upstream for example dams in China are already cutting off the water supply to downstream countries so that the most productive fishery in the world fresh water efficiently in the world the Tonle Sap fishery of cambodia it's already lost 85 percent of its production thanks to decreasing water flow in the dams upstream other countries where there is already a scramble for freshwater and which come close to conflict over include Turkey and Hungary versus Czechoslovakia and then Egypt's Nile facing problems from upstream dams so the earth another case where geography makes a difference the last example that I want to give you a geography making a difference is a subtle one and that has to do with the differences between China and Europe why is it that despite China's lead in technology in the Middle Ages 700 years ago and despite China having the world's largest population and deposits despite China having the seeming advantage of political unity for a long time why is it that China has not led the world and is not is not going to lead the world a curse of Chinese history is what I call lurching that China precisely because it's unity lurches back and forth between success and failure China got unified and you'll see that this is connected to geography China was unified for the first time in in the year 221 BC and China has been unified on and off for most of the time since 221 BC in a still unify today in contrast Europe has never been unified Europe has always been split into today 50 countries into the past hundreds of different principalities military geniuses and political geniuses from augustus to shaw main to napoleon to Hitler nobody has ever managed to unify Europe well you might think that unity is advantage for China and disunity a disadvantage for Europe no it works the opposite way unity means that with one person at the top when the one person makes a good decision that's good for the whole country but that one person at the top when that one person makes a bad decision it's a disaster for the country and that's why China lost its technological lead China in the Middle Ages led the world in technology it had the world's biggest that had the world's best ocean-going ships a large fleet of them and in the from 1405 to 1432 China sent out a fleet of its fleet of treasure ships with 20,000 sailors on them ships five hundred feet long that dwarf Columbus's ships China's treasure fleet sailed out seven times to India and down the coast of Africa and it looked as if China was on the verge of round in the tip of Africa and sailing up the conquering Europe but it never happened why because China was unified in 1432 China's one Empire one Emperor said we don't need that fleet all the thought fleet does is bring us back giraffes and ivory and we don't need that China has everything so in 1432 the emperor of china said no more ocean-going fleet that's what happens with China's unity contrast that with dis unified dis united Europe there was this crazy Italian called Christopher Columbus who had the weird idea that you could sail across the Atlantic Ocean when everybody knows that at the end of the Atlantic Ocean there's a trench and chips will fall into the trench so Christopher Columbus asked for support from one another third fourth Prince in Italy everybody said you're crazy he then went to France the King of France said you're crazy went to Spain the king of Spain said get lost you're nuts went to Portugal the king of Portugal said ridiculous went dr. Spain try to Duke here tried France and finally on the seventh cry Christopher Columbus got his ships they were little ships they were only three of them but precisely because Europe was dis unified Christopher Columbus had lots of chances China did not have the chance Christopher Columbus across the Atlantic did not fall into a trench and the result was then a stream of Europeans going around the world with a result that the world today is Europeanized and it's not Chinese eyes is that something that was the case only in the past no China even today lurches back and forth between successes and failures under Chairman Mao of China collectivized it's farms with the result of 30 people died starve to death epidemic of diabetes today as a result in China there was the Great Leap Forward there was the madness of the Cultural Revolution there was the closing down of China's educational system sending China's teachers and professors out into the fields for two years to work next to passes in dis unified Europe yes there have been crazy leaders in dis unified Europe but Europe has never been had a crazy leader who had closed down the educational system and could collectivise the farms in all of Europe that's been Europe's advantage Europe's fragmentation has been paradoxically a strength for Europe by meaning competition between different countries hunt dozens of different experiments hundreds of different experiments and the experiment that works best of the country countries then copy so what is all that what is the lurching of China got to do with geography my last homework assignment you just look at a map of China and compared with a map of Europe what's gonna strike you you will notice that the coast of Europe is massively indented Europe has these big peninsulas the Greek Peninsula the Italian peninsula the Iberian Peninsula the Danish Peninsula Scandinavian Peninsula each of those peninsulas became a separate country a separate language a separate experiment the coast of China is smooth China's only permissible Yau Tong peninsula was too small ever to become an independent experiment look also at Islands Europe has bigger islands Britain and Ireland each of which has become an independent experiment China has only one island a small island of Hainan close to the mainland Hainan never became significant look also with the rivers of China has China has two big rivers the Yellow River and the Yangtze River but China's two rivers they flow parallel and the land between them is low so China's two rivers were connected by canals early over 2,000 years ago Europe's rivers again look at the map yours URIs rivers flow out radially like the spokes of a wheel from the Alps in the center so the sin goes here and the Rome goes here and the Rhine goes here the elbow goes here and the Vista goes here and the Dan goes here and the PO goes here but each of Europe's River Basins became a separate experiment became Italy became Germany became France became Hungary whereas in China that the two rivers unified China finally the mountains in Europe there are the Alps in the center of Europe and there are the Pyrenees separating France from Spain and near the Carpathian Mountains and there are the border mountains of Scandinavia Europe is fragmented by mountains on either side of the mountains there are separate countries there's France here in Spain here this Italy here in this Germany here there Sweden here in this Norway here so Europe has been fragmented by its peninsulas and by its islands and its rivers and it's mountains and that fragmentation of Europe has been the strength of Europe it means dozens hundreds of competing experiments while China with its smooth coastline and its lack of significant islands and it's parallel quickly joined rivers and its lack of mountains in the central core of China China was unified early 221 BC has been unified most of the time since then is still unified today and that has been and will remain the curse of China China's unity it means that China will continue to lurch back and forth and we've seen that right now the coronavirus good heavens there was already the SARS epidemic in 2004 these diseases that come to us from animals if you were a cruel person who wanted to kill as many people in the world as possible you would foster the transmission of diseases from animals to us humans how would you best foster it by having open-air outdoor markets where you bring wild card' animals into the market you don't just have the wild animal eaten by the hunter and just the hunter gets infected you bring all those wild animals into a central market so you can get lots of people infected that was the case in 2004 you think that that would be enough of a lesson no it wasn't so we have coronavirus today we will see how China alert us today what it should do is close down forever all wild animal markets in the country but it didn't do that before and we'll see what happens today in short of geography despite our being in the globalized world geography still makes a difference and makes a difference to wealth it makes a difference to resources it makes a difference to the consequences of location it makes a difference even in subtle ways like the smooth coastline so this evening to look those maps take a look a map of Africa take a look of Napa South America take a look at the coastline of China take a look at the coastline of Europe and you will see geography matters geography will always matter geography is the bedrock of human society thank you

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Length: 25min 19sec (1519 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 20 2020