Summary - Section 42

Jared Diamond's article "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" briefly touches on patterns throughout societies and their destruction. His concern is that it could happen to us, though we have many factors that are different than past and older societies. Diamond best described the problem as "ecocide", which he describes as humanity destroying the environmental resources we depend on to sustain ourselves. Ecocide is a combination of deforestation, habitat destruction, soil problems, water management problems, over hunting, over fishing, introduced vs. native species, and human population growth. Diamond also discusses a 5-point framework of contributing factors, being environmental factors, climate change, hostile neighbours, friendly neighbours, and societies response to environmental problems (our differences and similarities). Sometimes societies work together, but a lot of the times we compete and that can lead to continuous destructive behaviours. People in third world countries are being effected, and if we don't fix these problems first world countries will be too.

Another fear is that modern technology could go two ways--solve our problem or doom us. But even though our accelerating technological advances could get us in a rut, Diamond points out that we have many advantages over the ancient societies that fell into extinction, and that we have past and present mistakes to learn and recover from. Environmentalists vs. Skeptics (or "non" environmentalists) are also in a continuous battle, where people are not trying to find an understanding of each other. For example, Diamond spoke about how big businesses aren't good for the environment, especially ones extracting non-renewable resources. He spent time with the company, and discovered that they are environmentally conscientious and make strong efforts to off-set their emissions.

The key point that Jared Diamond makes is that we should all work together, and try to have a better understanding of each other in this critical situation of trying to make a better future for all humanity.

Diamond, Jared. 2005. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In: Easton, Thomas A. Environmental Studies. Third Edition. Waterville (ME): McGraw Hill Higher Education. p. 213-218.