September 6, 2006
Collapse by Jared Diamond ::
books — tagged books, civilization, energy, environment, history and sustainability
9:37 pm
So in his book Collapse, Jared Diamond is back, and is just as thorough and expansive in his writing as he was in his previous work, Guns, Germs, and Steel. Only this time around, he focuses on how societies collapse rather than how they grow and flourish. Although reading the book takes a lot of work—I took about a month and a half to read it, while studying for the bar and reading other books—reading it is definitely well worth the effort. Not only does Jared Diamond once again forge a unique path when trying to explain the phenomenon of collapsing societies, he does a great job of speaking authoritatively, backing up all of his assertions with solid research and compelling stories of how societies decide to either work to preserve their resources and protect their environment or forge ahead with unsustainable lifestyles that ultimately result their demise.
Jared Diamond focuses first on a set of historical societies, including the Easter Islanders, the Anasazi, the Greenland Norse, and describes the mistakes those societies made that, after they went uncorrected, led to their destruction. Those decisions included mass deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, and—interestingly—a strange compulsion for certain societies to want to preserve an “old way” of living that was completely incompatible with their new environment. With regard to that last decision, an example that stuck out in my mind were the Greenland Norse, who brought the Norse way of living, the Norse form of agriculture, with them when they attempted to set up a society in Greenland. They found it impossible to sustain such a lifestyle there, and refused to adopt any of the ways of life of the Inuit people already inhabiting the island, even though those people had (slightly) more success in surviving in the inhospitable environment. In each of these examples, it appeared that the ancient societies were faced with a choice of either continuing their course of action, or making fundamental changes in their collective behavior, which could ultimately avert disaster. In many cases, the societies ultimately chose the former, which resulted in their society’s, well, collapse.
Diamond also discusses examples of societies that made decisions that ultimately allowed the socity to continue on and prosper. One example was Japan, which faced a substantial deforestation problem at one point in its history, but which is now one of the most heavily forested industrialized countries in the world, because of what Diamond describes as “top-down” decision making. As the name implies, there was one governing body that made the central decision to protect the country’s forests. Another option that Diamond discusses is the more bottom-up or collective approach to problem solving, which I personally found more attractive (I am, after all, a Vermonter at heart), which has also proven to be historically effective in preserving societies.
Ultimately, all of this discussion of historical societies then turns to a discussion of modern examples of societies that faced the same types of decisions those historical societies did. These modern examples had very similar outcomes, only with modern socities the stakes are always much higher—mostly because, unlike the ancient societies, countries no longer live or die in isolation. Because of globalization, the bad decisions that any single nation makes will ultimately have an effect on the broader global community. This is why the book is ultimately so important. If the human race is going to continue, the individual choices that not only individuals and communities, but entire nations, make will have a profound effect on the ultimate survival of humanity.
