COLLAPSE summary

Resource Overconsumption and Collapse

Collapse by Jared Diamond Jared Diamond examines how environmental damage, climate change, and societal choices led to the collapse of history's greatest civilizations. Why do some of history's greatest civilizations simply vanish into thin air? What if the environmental choices we make today are steering us toward the same tragic end? In Collapse by Jared Diamond, we explore the stark warnings from the past and how modern societies can survive.

Bad Leadership and Decline

Societies can collapse if they overconsume their natural resources Long-vanished societies have left their traces across the globe, from the pyramids of Egypt to the Incan temples of South America. One of the most famous examples of these ancient legacies are the Moai stone statues on Easter Island. There are over 800 Moai, and some are up to 10 meters tall. When European explorers first reached the island in 1722, they were awestruck by the Moai's size and number.

Yet they couldn't work out how they got there. They could only find 2,000 half-starved indigenous people who could never have achieved such feats. What the Europeans couldn't have known was that centuries earlier, Easter Island played host to a vibrant and prosperous society. A rich subtropical forest had covered the island, supporting a wide variety of birds and animals.

Along with fish in the surrounding seas, the rich flora and fauna provided enough to feed a population of 30,000. It was this community that erected the Moai as monuments to their gods. So what had happened to them? The Moai builders' world declined because its people committed ecocide.

They overused and exhausted their vital resources. First, the island's jungles were systematically cut down to help with the construction and transportation of the Moai from quarries to places of worship. The process continued until there were no jungles left. By the time the Europeans arrived, there was not a single tree on the island over 3 meters high.

Unfortunately, as the trees disappeared, so did the island's birds and animals. The loss of the jungles also affected the islander's ability to fish, because as the number of trees dwindled, there was no timber left to make fishing boats. Finally, without nutrients from the trees, the islander's crops started to fail, deprived of its major sources of food. Easter Island society soon collapsed into the wretched state the Europeans encountered.

Societies can collapse if they lose their major trading partners Have you ever seen one of the film adaptations of Mutiny on the Bounty? They tell the true story of how the crew of an 18th century British ship mutinied against their cruel commander. After capturing the ship, they decided to settle on a tiny group of Pacific islands known as the Pitcairns. Although the islands were deserted when they reached them, they also discovered many stone tools and bones.

It seemed that someone had once lived there, but where had they gone? In fact, centuries before the crew of the Bounty arrived in the archipelago, it was home to flourishing communities. As the two main islands, Pitcairn and Henderson, were too small to provide the populations with all the resources they needed, they had developed a sophisticated system of trade with their nearest neighbor, Mangareva. In return for shellfish and volcanic rock, the Pitcairn islands received vital goods such as crops, animals and even romantic partners from Mangareva.

The latter was vital as the small size of the Pitcairns meant that new mates were always needed for reproduction in order to avoid incest. While this arrangement gave the inhabitants of the Pitcairn islands what they needed, it left them with a huge weakness. Their survival was heavily dependent on the actions of their main trading partner. Unfortunately for the Pitcairn islanders, Mangarevan society soon turned its back on them.

Mangareva started to grow richer and its population grew accordingly, and in turn, more and more forest was cleared to provide space for crops. Eventually so many trees were felled that there were few left to turn into ocean-going canoes. Thus the Mangareva islanders lost their ability to trade with the Pitcairns. Without access to vital food and new genetic input, the Pitcairn islanders were helpless.

While it is not known whether their demise was quick or drawn out, by the time the crew of bounty arrived their society had vanished.