I remember when I was young there was a program on TV about Easter Island. Scientists at the time had no explanation for how the hundreds of 30 ton statues on the island had gotten where they were. There was also no explanation as to how humans got there. The island is very isolated, 1300 miles from the nearest land, and has very little in the way trees and nothing you could make any rope out of. When Europeans arrived in the 1700s, the natives had a very primative culture. There was no way the very primative canoes they had could have crossed the distance to the island. So the TV program suggested that it was proof that aliens had visited the earth in the past and had transported humans to the islands and had them build these huge stone monuments. (The programs also talked about crop circles, ties to Egyptian artifacts and a bunch of other stuff.)

Thirty years later, and now we know different. Once there were huge trees on Easter Island as well as plants useful for making rope, and dozens of now extinct birds and fish. Easter Island was settled by Polynesians a little over 1000 years ago using the same outrigger canoes they used to populate all the islands in the tropic Pacific. After they arrived, the Polynesians quickly filled up the island and overexploited its resources. They chopped down the trees, overfished the nearby ocean, and killed off the birds. The statues were built by competing chiefs at the height of Easter Island's population boom. Once the resources were gone the population collapsed in warfare and cannibalism. Resources that were depleted were incapable of renewing themselves, and by the time the Europeans arrived only a shadow of the civilization remained.

Easter Island makes up just one chapter of sixteen in "Collapse". In others, author Jared Diamond explores other societies that, although not as starkly obvious, were also subject to collapse at least partially due to overexploitation of the environment. Diamond looks at the Anasazi in the South Western U.S., the Maya in Central America, and the Norse in Greenland. Diamond also looks at societies that have lasted a very long time without collapsing, such as the farmers of Papua New Guinea, who have farmed the same area for 40,000 years and have a population density close to that of Holland, and the island of Tikopia, which is much smaller than Easter Island and also somewhat isolated (120 miles to the next island) and yet the population and community have been stable for 1000 years.

In addition to those tribal societies, Diamond also looks at environmental problems in more more modern settings, like Australia, where the English system of farming imported by immigrants has depleted grass cover of the more delicate Australian ecology; China, where increased economic wealth combined with the enormous population has resulted in air and water pollution; and Montana in the U.S., where exploitive mining has damaged waterways.

In the end, Diamond is trying to convince people that we are turning the entire planet into another Easter Island. If populations continue to increase at their current rate we too are destined for a horrific collapse that will set us back to less than ground zero, because instead of managing resources, we will have depleted them. Beyond increasing populations though it is rising standards of living that are dooming us, in Diamond's eyes. Even if the population of the planet stabalizes at twice it's current level, there is absolutely no way the planet can sustain that population if everyone is living at same way first world countries do.

Where I live it is hard to see that the world could be in danger of environmental collapse. The local population has decreased, not increased. And not because of environmental degradation, but because jobs have gone elsewhere due to bad business management and a high cost of living. Environmentally the area is in better shape than it was one hundred years ago. Yes, we have a few minor industrial spills, but the big factories have gone. Our area is undergoing a major reforestation, not because we depleted the soil and ruined the water, but because it has become more economical to farm elsewhere. The land is still here, and can still support crops if need be when and if the need arises.

I'm of mixed feelings about the conclusions in "Collapse". I agree that the author points towards a number of very difficult problems. I think though that some of them are on their way to being solved. Like pollution from cars. The U.S. and other car manufacturers are developing hydrogen cars that will produce water as their major pollutant. Wind power has apparently gotten cheap enough that industry is starting to take it seriously. And nuclear power remains a clean source of energy provided sufficient precautions are taken to avoid another disaster. So at the momentn we've got maybe 1/5 the world's current population living at first world standards. If the total world population manages to stabalize at 2x its current level while maintaining first world living standards for everyone, and if we get rid of gasoline emissions, use alternate sources of energy, and if we promote soil conservation maybe we can survive.

Still, Diamond might be right in that there may be serious social upheaval ahead of us. Certain populations just do not believe in birth control, like the Arabs and certain Jewish and Christian sects. Even with absolute dictorial power, China has only managed to slow not stop the population increase that country experiences. Soil degradation and resource degradation in certain areas may be irreversible.

So I don't know. Gotta hope that things will be same or better for my children's children. (although I probably won't have children's children, so what am I worried about).