I’ve seen Guns, Germs, & Steel get absolutely trashed by historians many times (not the least of which have been on this subreddit), but environmental determinism doesn’t seem to be dead sooooo… what happened to it? Are there any contemporary historians trying to address some of the issues with the paradigm? Have any of the problems with the former historians’ methodologies been rectified? Have any intellectuals defended environmental determinism, and if so, what have been their claims? Alternatively, has the field just moved on from environmental determinism entirely? If so, what have they moved on to?
I talked about this over here. You should check out the reference I gave there (Meyer and Guss 2017) for a very up-to-date and very well-written book about this question. In essence: environmental determinism is not bad methodology in and of itself, but it must work with a variety of other methodologies. It cannot stand on its own, just like pure excavation cannot stand on its own, or pure philology, or pure anthropology.
I will also add that M&G have a section specifically about Diamond, and I don't necessarily agree with everything they say there. They want some kind of magic threshold around 1500 CE, where complexity begins to erode more simple methodologies. This is, um, questionable, and a frequent assumption of those who do not spend a lot of time on the premodern world. The Roman economy was every bit as complex, in most ways, as a modern economy, and it is a mistake to assume ancient peoples were idiots or incompetent simply because they lived in a time before satellites and reality tv.