Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition

Collapse by Jared Diamond accurately discusses the concept of societies failing to thrive and falling apart. Within the book, Diamond analyzes societies of the past from all corners of the globe, from the Norse in the Arctic to the Easter Islanders in the Pacific. Through each society Diamond figures out how the territory was set up and what exactly brought down the collapse of the people there. Most of the reasons that societies collapsed had to deal with the environment that they were attempting to live in. For example, if people attempted to colonize an area that had poor soil, that would lead to a variety of problems for the society. The fields there would only be fit for farming or animal raising for a couple of years before the resources were depleted, and it would take a very long time for them to grow back due to poor soil quality. This would mean growing food would have to take place on a very small scale, limiting resources greatly and increasing the risk of starvation. The poor soil would also lead to slow tree growth, meaning that if a society wasn’t careful then they would use up their lumber supply quicker than they can grow it back, and without wood a society will risk failure due to lack of supplies. Therefore, poor environment quality as well as quick exhaustion of the lands resources helped cause the collapse of a number of societies in the past. Why would societies of the past overuse their natural resources so fast? Couldn’t they see that their ways of life were destroying the landscape? Diamond answers questions such as these, explaining that while it’s easy for us in the future to see what the problems were, they weren’t so clear for those colonizing the land at the time. Many of the societies that collapsed happened to first settle their while the land was at its best, when the soil was rich and the climate was good for growing, and a time that wouldn’t last. The settlers made their homes there and took advantage of the prosperous times, thinking that that was how life always was in that environment. However, when the climate changed back to its poorer state of being, the settlers were unprepared for the rapid degradation of their environment and experienced a tragic collapse. So the settlers of these collapsed societies didn’t necessarily exhaust their soils and cut down all of their trees on purpose or out of greed, rather it was due to an unexpected change of events for them that left them unprepared for a harsher climate than the one they were used to. Diamond also discusses modern day societies, those that have been around for centuries and may or may not continue to live on in the future. Examples of such societies range from the lowly populated fields of Montana to the bustling and highly polluted cities of China. Exhausting the soil and other resources of an environment is not just a problem of the past, but rather it lives on today as prevalent as ever before. Resources such as oil, fish and wood are becoming scarce in some areas which will lead to problems in the future if not soon dealt with. Environmental degradation due to abuse by big businesses is a major problem at home and overseas. Pollution from cities and industry are starting to cause problems on a global scale, causing for a need to act to avoid potential collapse. The well-being of the environment today lies in the hands of government, businesses and public opinion. Governments have the power to create regulations about how the environment can be used or preserved in order to stop resource depletion. Businesses have the choice to abuse the environment around them or try their best to remain a clean company. Public opinion helps shape the ideas of both government and big business, as the people are the ones represented in governments and big businesses will have to listen to their paying customers if they wish to stay profitable. Therefore, the well-being of the environment rests in the hands of the people and their decisions. By being informed about the resources that they use and how those resources are acquired and created, the people will have the ability to make good decisions to support environmentally sound practices that will bring about the betterment of society and environments all around the world. I personally believe that Diamond did a good job in explaining his facts, keeping the reader both well informed and interested in what he was saying. While some of what Diamond writes could come off as pessimistic, he is merely trying to portray facts about what has happened in the past and what is happening today. His bleak descriptions of reality are not meant to simply scare the reader into believing that the world as we know it is destined for collapse, but rather that people in today’s society just need to be careful with how we treat our environment. Diamond takes time to mention the good things that modern society is doing today to improve our situation, showing that there is still plenty of good news and still hope for the human race. Overall, Diamond does well in educating the reader about collapsed societies of the past. Not only does he go into detail in explaining what aspects of a society went wrong and led to the eventual collapse, but he also takes time to compare the collapsed societies to similar societies that managed to thrive. By doing this, he not only discusses what doesn’t work, but also what does work in a society. This extra detail in his writing succeeds in further educating the reader about societal success. In conclusion, Jared Diamond’s book Collapse does a decent job in explaining the environmental problems of yesterday and today, and how they have led to problems in different societies around the world, ranging from pollution to the entire collapse of a society. This well-written book describes the good and the bad in our world and tells the reader exactly what can be done to alter the course of our societies so that they can avoid the risk of potential failure or serious environmental issues such as land degradation or the exhaustion of natural resources. With the knowledge gained from this book, the reader can make educated decisions that can help the bigger picture of society by supporting businesses that are environmentally friendly and avoid the support of practices that might harm the environment further. With the knowledge from this book people can shape our society today so that it can avoid the risk of collapse in the future.

After the magnum opus Guns, Germs, and Steel, the Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond releases the follow-up Collapse, in which he uses a comparative analysis to show why some societies collapse while some others succeed. Although the complexity of the issue makes Diamond's analyses not consistently persuasive, still the book is among the most informative in this area, taking into account of its detailed evidence, scientific methodology, and multidisciplinary approaches. To investigate the collapse of societies, Diamond employs a five-point framework of possible factors: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and the society's responses to its environmental problems. He thereafter contrasts past collapsed societies with survived ones. Their different fate is partly attributed to the environmental differences i.e. some environments are more fragile than the others. A highlight here is the statistical analyses between the degree of deforestation on 81 Pacific islands and 9 physical variables. The statistical model predicted that the Easter Island should be among the worst deforested while Tikopia Island should be much more sustainable, which agrees with what actually happened. However, Diamond is not an environmental or geographical determinist. He lays particular emphasis on the societies' types of economy, values, and their response to environmental problems. It is exemplified by the story of Norse and Inuit, who shared the fragile Greenland, but held different values. Their fate was also diverged: the Norse Greenland died while the Inuit are still living in the island. The collapse of the Norse Greenland illustrates an essential theme of the book: the fate of one society is largely determined by its choice whether to cling to traditional values or to change. The Greenland Norse refused to "jettison part of their identity as a European, Christian, pastoral society" and as a result, they died. In contrast, Tikopia Islanders survived because they did not cling to their traditional values e.g., they abandoned raising ecologically destructive pigs even though the pigs were important as the only large domestic animal and the principal status symbol. Diamond's five-point framework to explain the failure or success of past societies is convincing. However, considering his objective is to tell contemporary societies what they should learn from the history and thereafter take favorable measures to achieve success, the crux becomes whether the parallels between the past and the present are appropriate. According to Diamond, their most obvious difference is that much more people are living in our planet today, retaining much more potent technology that impacts the environment. Thus, the risks for us today become higher. In addition, globalization could prompt the risks to become worldwide decline instead of in isolation collapse just like the case of Easter Island. Therefore, Diamond claims that the collapse of past societies is relevant to the modern world, which is in fact at higher risks. However, he overlooks that all of the past societies that he investigated are founded on agriculture, but the present societies are greatly relying on industry. They are entirely different in that agriculture is susceptible to climate change and environmental degradation while industry is relatively insensitive to these conditions. Hence it is debatable to make parallels between the past and the present societies. Nevertheless, modern societies could learn from the past because environmental problems have been undermining the quality of our life. Furthermore, the choice of values is still important for us to solve the problems and perhaps will influence our fate. An example is about China, which he calls the "lurching giant" and is besieged by severe environmental problems. Because of China's large population and economy, its environmental problems will not be restricted to domestic issues but will affect the whole world. More importantly, if China finally reaches First World levels, our earth will be definitely overburdened. However, no other countries have a right to prevent its economic development. Thus, the contradiction may ultimately evolve into a political issue. This case favors Diamond's claim that we cannot solve our problems without a change in human values, which agrees with the principle of "the Tragedy of the Commons". In the concluding section, Diamond explains why some societies make decisions that appear to be obviously self-destructive. "What did the Easter Islander say when he was cutting down the last palm tree in the island?" "We will find substitutes for wood."? Or: "This is my property. I can do whatever I want!"? Or: "Sorry, but I really need a canoe."? Diamonds prefers answering this with "landscape amnesia," which refers to the failure of people to perceive the gradual change surrounding them. "No one would have noticed the falling of the last little palm sapling." Failure to perceive a problem, together with failure to anticipate it, failure to solve it, or failure even to try to solve it, comprises the road map of bad decision-making. Undoubtedly, not everyone agrees with Diamond's viewpoints. Opposition has been directed against some of his foundations. Such oppositions is exemplified by Jennifer Marohasy, who disagreed with his claim that Australian land is unproductive, and it has been irreversibly damaged. In addition, the book is a slightly redundant in some chapters e.g., the story about the Norse Greenland. However it is still an enlightening book. Diamond's broad knowledge and plain writing style should prompt the public to take serious action in response to environmental problems.

The professed intent of this work is the establishment of an algorithm of survival, so to speak, based upon a close look at societies that didn't survive, for the most part. Quite quickly it becomes clear to the reader that cultural/ecological collapse is real but not so readily managed. As the author himself admits, one wonders what was on the mind of the man who chopped down the last tree on Easter Island. And yet this is an intriguing book, well researched, restrained for the most part, taking us to places and times we rarely think about to grasp the reality of how fragile our way of life really is. Along the way is the troubling discovery that yesterday, like today, man is his own worst enemy. Diamond's anthology does make a case that the entire planet is in trouble. But this author is meticulous and respectful: he succeeds in giving the reader a feel for local communities and regions, dissecting aspects of economy, geography, religion and human behaviors where people had real choices and made less inspired ones. One sees that similar processes are at work today in disparate parts of world, from Montana to Australia. I for one will forever feel guilty about broiling orange roughy on the Fridays of Lent. To give the reader some sense of his method, Diamond opens his works with a lengthy essay on the present day State of Montana. Big Sky Country is in trouble, though some folks in the Mountain Time Zone may bristle at his take on a state which has a reputation, at least, for self-sufficiency. The author calmly torpedoes a number of Montana's beliefs and practices, observing that were it a free standing nation, it would fall into Third World status. Diamond outlines a Montanan natural algorithm: its cool, dry, somewhat windy climate on the leeward side of mountains led settlers to seek an economy below the surface, where the state's only true industrial aged wealth resided--in mining. Diamond examines the relentless poisoning of Montana's land and water as a variety of natural toxins, set free in the mining process, began a century of steady leeching. The human expression of the survival algorithm comes into play in Montana quite vividly. For a number of reasons many citizens of the state resist government efforts to organize anything like zoning or greening. Centralization is political poison, a curious state of affairs for a state that gets a 150% return on its federal tax dollar. But Montana is hardly alone in its quirky thinking. Vikings on the verge of starvation in thirteenth century Greenland make considerable donations to the papal Crusade tax. Why people make the decisions they do is the one question Diamond never quite nails down with the precision of his other observations. Perhaps the best overriding definition of our global problems can be defined as "contemporary self interest." Just as Santayana warned of the dangers of not looking back, the author raises our awareness of looking toward the future. Although he traces nearly a dozen past and present civilizations, I found the lengthy tale of the Norsemen particularly compelling. The Vikings, having settled modern Scandinavia, began a near millennium of westward settlement. Iceland, with its climate and vegetation, was just marginal enough for permanent survival. The Viking settlement of Vinland, on the North American continent, ultimately broke down because warlike mannerisms were ultimately quashed by indigenous Indians. Greenland, however, was a slow and painful death of nearly five hundred years, where climate, technology, topography and hardheadedness eventually doomed a lengthy effort to colonize the great island. Diamond observed that the true tragedy of Greenland was the Norsemen's failure to learn from a surviving neighbor, the Inuit, who had mastered the boating, weaponry, and dietary limitations of the territory. This is not "Inconvenient Truth" tree hugging polemic. Rather than trumpet one big problem, the author dissects many overlooked smaller ones of the past, and sets them alongside similar potential strategies of the present day, in some cases species by species. In recent years I have developed a taste for Orange Roughy, a fish mass marketed in US shopping clubs. Diamond observes that most of the world's roughy is a product of the waters off Australia and New Zealand. Recent studies have found that this species does not begin to reproduce until the age of 40, and that most captured roughy is nearly a century old. At these numbers its reproduction will reduce exponentially [406]. Thus I am a kinsman of the last logger on Easter Island, grilling the last roughy on the patio. Roughy may seem like small potatoes, pardon the dietary allusion, but it is a good paradigm for more vital matters of fresh water, soil, food production, toxic waste, energy, and population. [Curiously, "global warming" is not a dominating theme of current day life problems, a sobering fact in itself.] Diamond discusses several international industry practices, particularly in matters of logging rain forests and drilling for oil. He devotes a chapter to "first world yuppies" who would dismiss his concerns as alarmist, again with a disarming humor--nobody has ever criticized a town for maintaining a fire house, he observes, if the town has but a few fires a year. [510] I do not know if Diamond is conversant with the writings of St. Augustine, the notably pessimistic Christian philosopher of the fifth century. At the risk of extremely generous paraphrasing, Augustine contended then that mankind is, religion notwithstanding, inherently flawed and selfish. Diamond does not say this directly, but his body of work does not make a liar of Augustine. Diamond's concern is not just that men are selfish and narrow sighted, but that there are a lot more men today, with more technology to do more questionable things. Perhaps prayer need be added to the algorithm of survival.

On page 521 of this book, Diamond describes himself as "a cautious optimist." The book is, in fact, quite upbeat, in spite of the dismal implications of the title. The various negative reviewers who have gone before me have obviously not read the book. It neither blames environmental destruction alone, nor resorts to the hysterical rhetoric of some environmentalists, nor does it trash industry. In fact, there is a whole chapter, and several other long passages, on successful environmental initiatives by industries of all types. He could have given the book a more accurate and less shocking title. OK, "Collapse" sells copies, but the book is more about environmental problems, solutions and successes than outright collapses. And it doesn't deal with the great collapses--the Roman Empire, for instance. Diamond considers several societies of the past that did themselves in by overusing their environments AND--critically important--by failing to get together and do something about it. In some cases they just failed to control the situation, but in some the problem was that a society that was densely populated, and in delicate balance with its environment, was undone by dramatic climate change--most obviously when increasingly serious drought from 900 to 1300 did in the Anasazi and the central lowland Maya. Warfare had a share in this, with increasing stress possibly increasing the warfare. Equally interesting are the success stories that Diamond tells. These more or less match the failures. Easter Island failed, but the similar island of Tikopia (another tiny Polynesian island) did fine in managing resources. The Maya failed, but Japan succeeded. Greenland's Norse colony failed, Iceland's made it through. Partly, this was a factor of environmental differences, but human succeess at getting everyone to work together was obviously the really important factor. Finally, Diamond discusses some modern cases where environmental overuse clearly contributed to civil meltdown. He is careful not to say it was "the cause," however. Bad government seems to be the cause of both the environmental mismanagement and the civil problems. Once people are desperate, from poverty and want as well as from oppression and tyranny, they do desperate things. I have a good deal of expertise in this area, and I found virtually no mistakes in this book. (One of note: The Maya did not collapse so thoroughly as he thinks. Many people and several marginal areas survived just fine. But the collapse was real, and his take on it is sensible and informed.) The book is also refreshingly free of biological reductionism; Diamond is fully aware that most of these are complex cases and that environmental mismanagement alone is rarely to blame. Some of his previous writings were full of naive biological reductionism and gratuitous trashing of indigenous people. He has clearly listened to, and learned from, criticism. He deploys, to advantage, many arguments that were deployed against some of his earlier work! I really respect anyone who can learn from criticism rather than merely getting defensive. My one serious criticism, and one that makes me much less optimistic than Diamond, is that Diamond does not deal with the degree to which hatred and conflict lead to environmental destruction. It is very hard to get people to work together. They'd rather fight. Worst of all, and the most frequent cause of environmental mismanagement, is a situation where powerful special interests whip up strife deliberately, as a divide-and-conquer or divide-and-rule strategy. This is terrifyingly visible in the United States, and elsewhere, today. Judging from the world mess today, if humanity puts itself out of business through environmental suicide--which is indeed quite likely--the major cause will be politicians' exploitation of religious extremism.

I admit I was biased before I even started reading this work. I wanted to know about Easter Island and the Greenland Norse. The other failed societies were of marginal interest to me. Sure I read about Montana, the Anasazi, and the Maya, while skipping over Rwanda, Dominican Republic/Haiti, and Australia. The chapters on China and Pitcairn/Henderson Islands were, however, interesting (the latter especially in the context of Easter Island). But it is into the two sections on Easter and the Greenland Norse that you can tell the author has poured his soul. They really stand out in what I read of this book - most of it - and perhaps for the history-interested layman they are the most interesting chapters to read. I'm not sure if the author presents anything radically new, but what he does do, which is to provide the lay reader with a useful summary of the present facts and findings on the two mysteries - he does very well. I feel I am now up to speed with some of the latest research into the disappearances of civilized society on Easter and in Norse Greenland. Nowhere else have I seen such useful and up-to-date general/overall accounts of the state of research into these two former societies. It's really required reading for anyone who has an interest in either. Not only does the author present us with - at the time of writing - the latest research, he also considers many pertinent issues himself and comes to his own conclusions. It's as if he took all the latest findings on Easter and Greenland and put them into an comprehensive, accessible, and useful/relevant perspective. What a great place then to start your readings into these two societies. The essential point about Easter is that the local chiefs spent the resources of the island on mutual competition and self-aggrandizement. The society failed to come together and pool its knowledge and resources. Had it done so, and had it exercized greater forethought and caution as did some of the other societies presented in the book (e.g. the Japan of the daimyo), it might well have survived a deal longer. The conclusions the author draws on the Greenland Norse are uniquely fascinating. In short, he puts their eventual collapse down to the following issues: 1) The Norse failed to hunt the ringed seals, fish and whales that the Inuit did, they thus deprived themselves of very important sources of winter protein 2) The Norse clung to their European, Christian, and Norwegian identity, values and heritage, and ultimately failed to adapt to their new surroundings - when the little Ice Age arrived they were undone 3) The Norse scorned the Inuit and failed to copy their ways or learn from them 4) Power in Norse Greenlandic society was in the hands of the chiefs and the clergy. These institutions had a vested interest in maintaining their own power and prestige inspite of developments that could have proven beneficial for Norse Greenlandic society as a whole The chapters concluding the book concerning why societies fail or succeed and what we can learn from them today certainly have their value, even if the points made are at times a little self-evident. For any reader interested in the two "failed" societies mentioned above, plus many others, you could hardly find a better place to begin than here. Top marks to Jared Diamond.

The first half of this book is very interesting and well worth the read. It convincingly describes the collapse of several ancient, and not-so-ancient, societies. I'm not sure why he provides an extended discussion of problems in Montana and how that relates to his central thesis of the book, but it is interesting. I'm also concerned, as are some other reviewers, about the lack of discussion of societies that faded away rather than collapsed, like the Greeks and Romans. The author attempts to apply principles from the collapses of these ancient societies to portend what the future holds for us, but it is not convincing. We live in a global society, and it's difficult to see how the collapse of these isolated societies is relevant to today. The main problem I have with the book is that it focuses almost exclusively on physical and environmental limitations and almost completely neglects institutional constraints. The corruption of third world governments and misguided policies of first world countries, it seems to me, are significant problems. For example, one could argue that the primary problem is overpopulation, and that cheap, available birth control could rapidly reduce population growth, but policies espoused by the US are directly contradictory to that. How can we hope to solve the most fundamental environmental problem when we can't even agree that it's a problem? The author says that he is cautiously optimistic about the future, but that conclusion does not flow from the evidence presented. He argues that population and economic growth place unsustainable demands on the resource base, but doesn't say how he expects these pressures to decline to a point at which they are sustainable. I think he's optimistic because if his conclusions were drawn from the evidence he presents, he would be branded as just another alarmist, and the book would not be taken seriously. The author paints a bleak picture of China, arguing that rapid economic growth and rising incomes will cause the Chinese to place a huge strain on the world resource base. It seems to me that the wealthier a country is, the more able they are to afford to protect habitat and resources, in which case rising income is a good thing. True, economic growth will strain our ability to provide nonrenewable resources, but perhaps rising incomes will provide the ability to afford alternatives. The author points to examples of sustainability from New Guinea, where the population has maintained itself for centuries. Unfortunately, for advanced societies, that level of existence would be unacceptable. From the author's perspective it seems impossible to achieve sustainability without a dramatic decline in living standards. If it was a choice between mere subsistence and extinction nearly all would make the obvious choice, but we would never face such a choice, as change is incremental and there is a great deal of uncertainty. It would be more convincing if the author identified a society in which the standard of living was at least close to that of the first world and which appeared to be sustainable, but no such place exists. The author doesn't plot a course for the future, and rightly so. His prescription would be so harsh that it would have no chance of being adopted. After reading this book I feel trapped between hope that mankind will muddle along as we always have, and a resignation that it's only a matter of time. One might argue that we will survive because we are smarter than those people in ancient societies that collapsed, but the author argues convincingly in his book "The Third Chimpanzee" that we are probably collectively less smart than people in those ancient societies (essentially because the gene pool is weaker now because a higher proportion of individuals live to adulthood and enter the gene pool). So if we're not smarter and our institutions are unable to adapt, the only thing I can think of that offers hope is technology. The author downplays technology, and this is one area in which I strongly disagree. Yes, it is costly to convert seawater into fresh water, but if we can discover a way to do so cheaply, we could expand cropland in some of the poorest areas of the world. There are cleaner sources of energy that are too expensive to be commercially viable, but as petroleum-based energy sources become more scarce and expensive, these sources may become viable energy sources. And although it seems like it would be a long way off, we may someday be able to mine nonrenewable resources on other planets. Overall, the author provides an interesting, thought-provoking discussion of some very important problems. The book caused me to spend a lot of time pondering these issues, and the more I pondered, the less comfortable I am drawing conclusions about our future based on the evidence of several collapsed societies. But it does provide some general warnings that societies can, and do, collapse, and that it is not outside the realm of possibility that mankind could face a day of reckoning when environmental factors could cause cataclysmic changes in life as we know it. I certainly hope it doesn't happen anytime soon.

I grew up playing in the ruins of the ancient Anasazi. Like the giant, carved stone heads on Easter Island, Anasazi ruins stand in the Arizona desert like mysterious totems of a civilization that simply disappeared from the face of the Earth. As a child, the disappearance of the Anasazi was a mystery that fueled my imagination. How could an entire population of people simply vanish? Growing up in the Space Age, an era when every American looked up into the night sky and dreamed of walking on the moon, the idea of space travel and the existence of UFO’s enthralled me. I devoured Erich von Däniken’s book, "Chariots of the Gods?—Unsolved Mysteries of the Past," studying the photos that seemed to prove ancient astronauts had visited the Earth. So, it wasn’t difficult for me to theorize that the Anasazi were ancient astronauts who had, for unknown reasons, simply climbed aboard a spacecraft and left, leaving behind their ruined dwellings and a centuries-old mystery. Long after I had grown up and moved away from Arizona, I forgot about the baffling ancient Anasazi. I never quite stopped believing, though, that ancient astronauts could account for their disappearance. However, their actual fate, whatever it was, remained a mystery. Then I read Jared Diamond’s book "Collapse – How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." In scientific detail, Jared Diamond explains exactly what happened to the ancient Anasazi. He also explains the fates of other past societies that have disappeared, leaving behind their stone temples, monuments, and buildings as measurements of their previously massive populations and ingenuity. In an expansive volume of 560 pages, Diamond relates the purpose and meaning of the carved stone heads on Easter Island as well as how and why the societies of the Easter Islanders, Pitcairn and Henderson Pacific Islanders, Mayans, and Norse Greenland Vikings all eventually collapsed and disappeared. Without revealing the ending, let me just say that Diamond proves that UFO’s and ancient astronauts had nothing whatsoever to do with the disappearance of any of these civilizations, though, to keep you interested, cannibalism does. Importantly, as fascinating as they are, the fates of all those ancient peoples are not the focus of Diamond’s book. Instead, Diamond is interested in answering the question: Could what happened to them happen to us? The chilling answer is yes. Using detailed and explicit examples, he shows us how current, modern societies—we—are following the same path to total demise. "Collapse," however, is not just a doomsday book about what we as a society are doing wrong that, if not corrected, will lead to our destruction. It is also a how-to manual, offering an array of possible solutions and giving positive examples of societies that have effectively applied the solutions to the problems we are facing. It is also a wake-up call, a call to arms, an alarm that everyone should hear and heed. I think "Collapse" is an important book, one that I have added to my “must-read” list, that is, books I recommend others read. If you decide to read it, and I hope that you will, you will discover that it was originally published in 2005. I assure you, though, that the book not only remains relevant today but also, I think, continues to grow in importance as time goes on. You may also find that "Collapse" reads likes a college textbook. The basis for "Collapse" was, in fact, first developed as a college course Diamond taught at Stanford University. As thorough and scientific as it is, Diamond is not short on providing fascinating details that kept me interested and helped me get through the entire volume. By the time I finally finished it, I felt as though I had successfully monitored Diamond’s course, and I had learned a lot.

Jared Diamond. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. NY: Penguin Group 2005. 575 pp. Further readings 32 pp. $17.00 Jared Diamond brings us a cogently argued discussion of numerous societies over several thousand years that collapsed, and of a very few that have survived. He has gathered a convincing mass of evidence that the fall of most societies is due to destruction of their environments, which he calls “ecological suicide.” …The processes through which past societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into eight categories, whose relative importance differs from case to case: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, desalinization, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people. (p. 6) Diamond points out that modern society considers itself immune to collapse because of modern technology, but that in fact, we are simply destroying our planet on a much vaster scale and at a much faster rate than ever before. Our much larger population and interdependence upon conditions in distant locations means that environmental collapses in distant places puts us at greater risk than ever before. One of the principal problems is our focus on immediate profits from extraction of resources while minimizing costs – including the expenses for disposing of waste byproducts in safe manners and in avoidance of pollution. …Successful businesses differentiate between those expenses necessary to stay in business and those more pensively characterized as ‘moral obligations.’ Difficulties or reluctance to understand and accept this distinction underscores much of the tension between advocates of broadly mandated environmental programs and the business community… (p. 37) When the mine owner can’t or won’t pay, taxpayers don’t want to step in and pay billions of dollars of cleanup costs either. Instead, taxpayers feel that the problem has existed for a long time, out of sight and out of their backyards, so it must be tolerable; most taxpayers balk at spending money if there isn’t an immediate crisis; and not enough taxpayers complain about toxic wastes or support high taxes. In this sense, the American public is as responsible for inaction as are miners and the government; we the public bear the ultimate responsibility. Only when the public pressures its politicians into passing laws demanding different behaviors from mining companies will the companies behave differently; otherwise, the companies would be operating as charities and would be violating their responsibility to their shareholders… (p. 38) The bottom line is the attitude of “ISEP” – It’s somebody else’s problem. Diamond details the problems of ecological collapse that led to the downfall of almost every society on our planet in recorded history, including Easter Island, Pitcairn (famous from Mutiny on the Bounty) and Henderson Islands, the Anastazi of New Mexico, the Mayans of Mexico, the Vikings, the Norse in Greenland, Australia, and many others. All fell due to having ignored the limitations of carrying capacity of their environments in the face of overpopulation. The saddest aspect of all of these societal ecological suicides is that modern man has not heeded the lessons of the past. We are repeating the very same mistakes but on such a vast, planetary scale, that we are well on our way to causing the sixth great extinction of our planet. We have no way of knowing what the tipping point of no return might be. Hopefully, we are not already too late to halt and reverse our path to global self-destruction. (See the editorial in this issue for more on this.) The brilliance of Diamond’s book is that he points out that there are alternatives to what we are doing, with clear examples from past and present societies for sustainable ways to live on this earth. One of these is the New Guinea highlands, “…and that agriculture has been going on there for about 7,000 years – one of the world’s longest-running experiments in sustainable food production.” Here, small, family landholdings worked by within close-knit communities are run with careful consideration of the needs of the land and its plants and animals, as well as of the needs of the people. There is a firmly entrenched bottom-up approach that prevails on this island, with local citizens making the decisions that are needed to resolve communal problems. A very important contribution to their success is their self control of population to avoid exceeding the carrying capacity of the land. Similar success is evident on Tikopia, a small island in the Southwest Pacific Ocean. Again, there is a bottom-up structure to their society, with 3,000 years of survival of their culture. My own impression is that much of the success of these small societies may be attributed to the social rule that people do well within a limit of 150 members in their community (or working group). Within this limit, everyone knows everyone else personally and relationships are based on frequent interactions between all members of the group. There isn’t the impersonality of larger societies that allows and encourages greedy and/or power-hungry individuals or groups (be they businesses, corporations or politicians) to build their power and control over other members of the population – for their own benefits, at the expense of the rest of the population. But Diamond does not stop here. He points out that Japan is another example of several hundreds of years of balancing population growth with careful stewardship of their cultivated land and forests. Diamond’s book was written several years prior to the Fukushima disaster that continues to deteriorate and to threaten the health of the Japanese people, their land, and probably – to an unknown extent – of the nearby ocean waters and of many others in the Northern Hemisphere. So perhaps my conjecture about the long-term viability of a society depending on the presence of smaller communities still holds. Diamond makes many helpful suggestions for how to deal with the crisis of our impending sixth global extinction. This is a book most highly recommended for anyone concerned with bettering our world. Review by Daniel Benor, MD, ABIHM Editor-in-Chief, IJHC

On ne peut pas parler d'Écologie sans avoir d'ABORD lu ce livre du début à la fin. Panorama des conséquences de mettre la satisfaction des pressions immédiates au péril de l'avenir, coupant des arbres, élevant des chèvres et ayant trop d'enfants. Les technologies nous permettent certaines croissances, mais il faut bien en comprendre les limites: par exemple l'irrigation entraîne la salaison des terres et inéluctablement à leur infertilité. Le Montana était LA belle montagne, maintenant c'est une montagne de problèmes. L'Île de Pâques était fertile, maintenant c'est fini. Le Moyen-Orient était le Croissant Fertile, maintenant c'est fini. L'Afrique du Nord était le grenier à blé de Rome, maintenant c'est fini. Les chèvres ont tout détruit. Le Kenya, le Soudan, bientôt l'Égypte... etc. En fait presque partout. La Chine a compris, replante des millions d'arbres pour contenir et espérer repousser le désert de Gobi. Il y a un timide effort au sud du Sahara et des bruits sur l'Amazonie. En refermant ce livre, on court vers le jardin pour y planter un arbre, et on ne rie plus des Végétariens. Vive la viande synthétique. Relire le roman "Make Room! Make Room!" (Harry Harrison, 1966), revoir le film "Solyent Green" (1973, en France: Soleil Vert), scénario prévu pour... 2022, juste l'année prochaine.

lectura amena, un poco lenta quizas, recalca mucho los mismos puntos a lo largo de los capitulos, pero finalmente es entretenido y puede hacerte ver las cosas que hacemos mal por el medio ambiente

It is a great book. I strongly recommend it, in my humble opinion is easy to read and really interesting. I just finished it and I would not mind to read it again. In addition, at the end of the book he wrote so many recommendations, not just a list of bibliography. As many books related to environmental topics, there are many things interrelated so many subjects are covered. And in this "bibliography" he gives so many references to get a deeper knowledge in these different subjects. To sum up, I really like it and I am thinking about buying it in my mother tongue as a present for some friends (as you can see, english is not my mother tongue)

Great read for this who may want to help build a better world for our kids. Very disturbing to note that many are still not protecting Mother Earth .

Help me learn in history.