USU Researcher Featured in June 2 ABC News Special 'Earth 2100'

What will Earth be like in the next century? Utah State University researcher Joseph Tainter is among an international slate of scholars who will tackle this question in the upcoming ABC News primetime special Earth 2100.

Bob Woodruff hosts the two-hour documentary, set to air Tuesday, June 2, which explores societal and environmental challenges that face future inhabitants of planet Earth. Could population growth, resource depletion and climate change converge over the next hundred years with catastrophic results?

“Complexity always costs,” says Tainter, an anthropologist and historian who serves as head of USU’s Department of Environment and Society. “The more complex a society becomes the more energy it uses. Lessons from history show us that problems arise when a society’s complexity increases beyond its energy resources.”

In addition to views from the experts, Earth 2100 features a sampling of amateur videos submitted over the past year to the program’s Web site and Facebook page. In what ABC bills as “an unprecedented Internet event,” participants offer diverse perspectives and solutions that can be pursued now to prevent future societal disaster.

Tainter, who joined USU’s faculty in 2007, is author of the book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, first published in 1988. He was among the scholars featured in Adolfo Doring’s 2008 documentary, Blind Spot, and Leonardo DiCaprio’s 2007 eco-documentary The 11th Hour.

Unaddressed, problems of global sustainability will ultimately result in a decrease in the net benefits of our complex, consumer-oriented society, says Tainter, who has studied the demise of the Roman Empire and the Chacoan and Mayan civilizations.

“Historically, societal collapse occurs when a society’s investments in social complexity reach a point of diminishing returns,” he says. “Innovation that boosts productivity is the key to stemming declining returns and sustaining an increasingly complex society. The question we need to ask ourselves is ‘What do we value enough to work to sustain?’”

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