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Book Reviews
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Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
by Jared Diamond
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COLLAPSE is the latest book by Jared Diamond, one of the foremost scientists of our time. In his previous book GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL, Diamond took a deep look at how Western Civilization came to dominate the world. In his new book, he explores the decisions various societies have made that led either to their long term sustainability or to collapse. Diamond skillfully leads us through the stories of both pre-literate societies and great civilizations, and in the process holds up a mirror to our society’s own arrogance and self-destructive patterns. We see how bad environmental and political decisions drove some cultures to extinction while wise choices allowed others to live in a sustainable fashion for thousands of years. We see the Inuit thriving in the brutal climate conditions of Greenland while Norse colonists starve to death amidst abundance they are unequipped to take advantage of. We trace the downfall of the Mayans who destroy their rich environment and contrast their decision-making with the Japanese and Andean civilizations that engage in long-term planning to keep their cultures thriving. In the case of Andean civilization, people discovered how to live sustainably in a highly difficult and resource-poor environment. We learn about the self-induced environmental collapse of Easter Island and contrast it with the sustainable society of the highland people of New Guinea.
Diamond is a Professor of Geography at UCLA. He is a trained physiologist who branched out into evolutionary biology and bio-geography. His knowledge of anthropology and archeology is also profound. He has used these diverse academic fields to deal with some of the most important questions of our times. In the past, a society might cause the environment of its own region of the world to collapse and cause its own demise. But today, we and other nations of the world are engaged in practices that threaten to cause global environmental collapse. We have the tools and the technology to avoid this collapse, but do we have the wisdom?
Diamond tries to deal optimistically with our predicament by citing examples of corporate and government greed being reined in by the determined efforts of far-sighted people. There are several stories of corporations that figured out that doing things right environmentally is in their long term interest and would even make them more money in the long run. But he also shows in considerable detail how our society and other modern societies are repeating every mistake of failed civilizations of the past, on a global scale. Perhaps the scariest chapter is on the staggering problems that China faces. Diamond avoids the political for the most part, but it doesn’t take much imagination to discern the potential for war and strife as China exhausts its resources and begins competing more and more with the West, and the U.S. in particular, for less and less critical resources – particularly oil and water.
This book should be required reading for every government and corporate leader in the world. If they took it seriously, we might have a fighting chance. It also should be required reading for many progressives who are highly attuned to social justice issues but are not fully aware of the full extent of the environmental catastrophe facing the planet. All the terrorists in the world doing their worst, plus U.S. military occupations and bombings, will not kill a fraction of the people who are already dying as the direct result of either global weather change or environmental pollution.
Reviewed by Larry Saltzman, one of the members of the sustainable think tank in Santa Barbara; go to www.forthefuture.org.
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