Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jared DiamondEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-12-27
ISBN: 0143036556
Number of pages: 575
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Book Review: Prophetic?
Summary: 5 Stars
Why do some societies at the peak of their greatness collapse? What can we learn from past societies that collapsed?
By collapse, the author means a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time (p. 3). He arrived at a five-point framework of possible contributing factors. Four of those sets of factors--environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and loss of friendly trade partners--may or may not prove significant for a particular society. The fifth set of factors--the society's responses to its environmental problems--always proves significant (p. 11).
The society of Easter Island is as close as we get to a `pure' ecological collapse, in this case due to total deforestation that led to war, overthrow of the elite, construction of the famous stone statues, and a massive population die-offs. In order to build their gigantic stone statues and for its rulers to maintain their high standard of living, the inhabitants of Easter island cut their trees, and in the process, destroyed the forest and all of its inhabitants. The few remaining Easter islanders who survived after this environmental collapse became cannibals and were dying of starvation when the Europeans discovered their island. Why would the Easter islanders allow themselves to reach such a destitute state? Why didn't they stop cutting the trees before it was too late, and implemented a reforestation program? Why didn't they build seafaring ships to import wood from other islands or continents (obviously with all their forest disappearing they couldn't build any ships)?
How did the Easter islander who cut the last remaining tree on the island feel? Jared Diamond explains how hard it must have been for the Eater islanders to actually notice their forests shrinking. People get used to a certain scenery or panorama, and it becomes the norm. As the forest is halved in size, the next generation will view the size of the forest as the norm, and will not notice that indeed it has shrunk in size. Today, most of the animals on our planet have been driven to extinction, yet we still view the diversity of the animal life on our planet as the norm, not realizing that a few hundred years ago the number of different species on our planet was probably double what it is today.
The author gives as examples other societies that have collapsed. The rulers of the Mayan empire, the most advanced Native American society, also destroyed their environment in order to build their palaces and live their luxurious lifestyle, with little regard to their population of tens of millions or the environment. We see this today in many of the Arab and African nations, where leaders live at the expense of their citizens and live a life as if there were no tomorrow or a God, and in the process having little regard for the environment. Many African countries, as well as China, are on the verge of an irreversible environmental collapse. Will these nations end up like Easter Island?
The Chaco Anasazi society also collapsed because of deforestation and problems of water management. The society flourished from about A.D. 600 for more than five centuries, until it disappeared sometime between 1150 and 1200. It was a completely organized, geographically extensive, regionally integrated society that erected the largest buildings in pre-Columbian North America (p. 143). When the Anasazi began diverting water into channels for irrigation, the concentration of water runoff in the channels and the clearing of vegetation for agriculture, combined with natural processes, resulted around A.D. 900 in the cutting of deep arroyos in which the water level was below field levels, thereby making irrigation agriculture and also agriculture based on groundwater impossible until the arroyos filled up again (p. 144-145). Today, China is facing similar problems of water management. China has become the number one nation in number of dams, with over 40,000 dams to date. These dams are destroying the ecosystem within China itself and its neighboring countries, like Mongolia; severely affecting cities downstream; and causing political unrest by depriving some neighboring countries, like Vietnam, of water.
Haiti is a great example of a collapsed society. Haiti is totally destroyed with no means of redemption. Its natural resources have been completely depleted. There are many reasons, but the two main ones are its ruthless and blood-thirsty rulers who ransacked the country for their selfish gain and the fact that its population is now too large for its land space and remaining resources.
Why did the Norse who settled in Greenland fail, while the natives, the Inuit, did not? The Greenland Norse were not acclimated to the harsh winters of Greenland. When they first settled, the temperatures were still warm. The cold seasons, however, proved to be very harsh for them. Furthermore, the Greenland Norse never learnt the seal hunting techniques of the Inuit, missing out on an important source of protein. The Inuit dug holes in the ice, and waited behind an ice mound for a seal to come out to breath. The Inuit had to strike the seal with a spear from behind the mound, without seeing the seal, and without the seal seeing them. They would know of the seal's presence from the sound it made as it came out for air. This is a difficult hunting technique the Greenland Norse never learnt. In the Norse's case, the environment they lived in, and the failure to adapt, was the cause of their collapse.
Some societies were on the verge of collapse but recovered. One such case is Japan. Japan almost destroyed its forests, but quickly realized its mistake and went on an intensive reforestation program. Its environment helped it tremendously. Its soil, fed by the many volcanoes, is rich in plant nutrients, and as a result, trees in Japan grow much faster than in other areas of the world. The frequent rainfalls also provide abundant water to its forests. Furthermore, Japan is a spiritual country with great respect and admiration for its natural environment. Destroying entire forests, unlike the Easter Islanders, was just not an option for its spiritually wise leaders. Japan's spiritual doctrines therefore also contributed greatly to its recovery from near total environmental collapse. Rulers therefore play a major role on whether societies fail or succeed. If Africa and the Arab countries should be blessed one day with wise, unselfish and uncorrupt leaders, their fate might change and their societies might once again flourish. It is sad to think how so few cause pain and misery to so many. It just takes one great leader to turn a nation around. Similarly, it takes just one evil leader to destroy an entire nation. For example, collapses have already materialized for Somalia and Rwanda. No need to give more examples; they are all around us!
The author also gives examples of present day societies on the verge of collapse. He cites China as a prime example. China is destroying its environment at an alarming rate in order to sustain its growth. It has very limited natural water, with its once mighty Yellow River now dry for almost 200 days out of the year. Its cities are the most polluted in the world. Furthermore, China receives money from foreign governments to bury their toxic waste. It is not uncommon to see Chinese people wearing masks in the streets to protect their lungs against the world's worst urban air pollution. Furthermore, massive erosion has ruined large areas of the Loess Plateau in China. For more on the environmental impacts of China on the world and its eventual demise read Peter Navarro's `The Coming China Wars.'
Australia, with the world's most fragile environment, is another country on the verge of collapse. It too has destroyed its environment by human folly and by the introduction of alien animals. The plague of introduced rabbits and sheep that consume vegetation led to erosion. Australia is now among the countries considering the most radical restructuring of its society, in order to solve its environmental problems. One interesting fact is that if Australia is to minimize its effects on global warming, it must kill all its cows. Its cows produce so much methane that they are a major contributor to global warming. Will the Australian government slaughter all its cows in order to save our planet?
The processes through which past societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into eight categories: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact on people (p. 6). The environmental problems facing us today include the same eight that undermined past societies, plus four new ones: human-caused climate change, buildup of toxic chemicals in the environment, energy shortages, and full human utilization of the Earth's photosynthetic capacity. Most of these 12 threats, it is claimed, will become globally critical within the next few decades (p. 7).
Our planet now has become like one nation. Globalization makes it impossible for modern societies to collapse in isolation, as did Easter Island and the Greenland Norse in the past. Pollution in China affects the whole world, as the jet stream transports this pollution worldwide. Cutting trees will affect us all, since trees produce the world's oxygen. Furthermore, Global warming will affect the whole planet, not just some isolated countries with the most pollutants and gas emissions. Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote--think of Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq as examples--can cause trouble for prosperous societies on other continents. The problem facing us today is not which countries will fail or succeed, but whether our planet will collapse. For the first time in history, we face the risk of a global decline. We must therefore all work together to save our planet, or we will all fail.
Summary of Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
In his runaway bestseller Guns, Germs, and Steel, Jared Diamond brilliantly examined the circumstances that allowed Western civilizations to dominate much of the world. Now he probes the other side of the equation: What caused some of the great civilizations of the past to fall into ruin, and what can we learn from their fates? Using a vast historical and geographical perspective ranging from Easter Island and the Maya to Viking Greenland and modern Montana, Diamond traces a fundamental pattern of environmental catastrophe?one whose warning signs can be seen in our modern world and that we ignore at our peril. Blending the most recent scientific advances into a narrative that is impossible to put down, Collapse exposes the deepest mysteries of the past even as it offers hope for the future.Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is the glass-half-empty follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. While Guns, Germs, and Steel explained the geographic and environmental reasons why some human populations have flourished, Collapse uses the same factors to examine why ancient societies, including the Anasazi of the American Southwest and the Viking colonies of Greenland, as well as modern ones such as Rwanda, have fallen apart. Not every collapse has an environmental origin, but an eco-meltdown is often the main catalyst, he argues, particularly when combined with society's response to (or disregard for) the coming disaster. Still, right from the outset of Collapse, the author makes clear that this is not a mere environmentalist's diatribe. He begins by setting the book's main question in the small communities of present-day Montana as they face a decline in living standards and a depletion of natural resources. Once-vital mines now leak toxins into the soil, while prion diseases infect some deer and elk and older hydroelectric dams have become decrepit. On all these issues, and particularly with the hot-button topic of logging and wildfires, Diamond writes with equanimity.
Because he's addressing such significant issues within a vast span of time, Diamond can occasionally speak too briefly and assume too much, and at times his shorthand remarks may cause careful readers to raise an eyebrow. But in general, Diamond provides fine and well-reasoned historical examples, making the case that many times, economic and environmental concerns are one and the same. With Collapse, Diamond hopes to jog our collective memory to keep us from falling for false analogies or forgetting prior experiences, and thereby save us from potential devastations to come. While it might seem a stretch to use medieval Greenland and the Maya to convince a skeptic about the seriousness of global warming, it's exactly this type of cross-referencing that makes Collapse so compelling. --Jennifer Buckendorff
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