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The discipline of geography is back! Jan 7, 2005 (620 of 677 found this helpful)
"Collapse" is a wonderful book! Prof. Diamond combines hard science, rigorous historical research, and his own personal knowledge of people from the Bitterroot Valley of Montana to the west coast of Greenland to Rwanda to the highlands of New Guineau. He pulls together clear and compelling explanations of how events unfolded (and are still unfolding) in various parts of the world.
His accounts of various human communities draw on real data from a wide variety of academic fields, including isotope analysis, pollen analysis, tree-ring analysis, seismology, agronomy, archaeology, sociology, and even the history of religion. His explanations of each of these disciplines are lucid without oversimplification. But, the strength of the book comes from the the way he combines results from all these fields to create straightforward narratives of what might have happened as various communities rose and fell.
If I were I high school "social studies" teacher I would be talking to my principal today, saying "I want to put together an honors-level geography course and I want to use this as the textbook."
I do have one criticism. The subject matter of the book is tremendously consequential to people alive today, and hopefully "policy wonks" in governments will study the book and take it seriously. But, the title is a bit inflammatory. What's more, Prof. Diamond makes sure to explain the significance for the United States of his accounts of the demise of various ancient communities. Some of these explanations extrapolate from ancient situations to modern in a way that isn't quite as solid as the rest of the book. Diamond's extrapolations are very cleary marked as such. However, I am still afraid that they, combined with the title, will provide an excuse for people to dismiss the book as a "pro-environment anti-business" ideological polemic. That would be unfortunate, because it is actually balanced and nuanced in its explanation of the human condition.
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There is no somewhere else Jan 14, 2005 (304 of 331 found this helpful)
About 15 years ago, I was shocked to read the results of an American aerial survey of roads in remote areas of the country, which concluded that there is (in 1990) no place in the continental United States that is more than about 20 miles, as the crow flies, from the nearest road. At Philmont Scout Ranch in the Sangre de Cristo range of the Rockies in NE New Mexico, to which many hundreds of Scouts travel each summer for an extended "wilderness" hike, the paths, directions and speeds of each of the flood of hiking parties is managed on a wall-size map in their war room, much like a flight control room of a modern airport. The conscious purpose of the war room is to present "the illusion of wilderness" to the hikers, by preventing them from seeing that there are crowds of other hikers nearby in every direction, only hidden by a bend, a ridge, a ravine.
In one of Jared Diamond's earlier books, Guns, Germs and Steel, he explored the role of man's natural environment in shaping the unique nature of the human societies that emerged in different regions of the world. It was backed by a prodigious body of research spanning anthropology, physiology, botany, archeology, animal behavior and climatology, to name only a few fields. Although his conclusions were satisfying and plausible, the subjects were too remote in time to garner more than a smile and a nod of the head. The paucity of detailed evidence regarding the biologic emergence of man, and man's development of agriculture, animal domestication and civilization, dooms Dr. Diamond's conclusions on those subjects to the realm of conjecture.
Now we are presented with the other side of the equation: the role of man's behavior in shaping the environments in which he lives. While Professor Diamond seems to go to great lengths to present us with a glimmer of optimism in the face of a substantial body of contrary information, the thrust of this new volume is that today, anybody's environmental problem is everybody's problem. His discussions of past failed (and successful) societies serve as a sequence of progressively more complex environmental scenarios highlighting the choices-both intentional and unintentional-that determined the ultimate outcome.
One wonders how intelligent people in those societies that ultimately failed seemed to have made decisions that, at least in retrospect, were patently damaging to their future survival. Diamond offers numerous examples of contemporary environmental challenges for which perfectly rational individuals and governments have made, and continue to make, decisions that are damaging to their future survival.
Over thirty years ago, JW Forrester, then at MIT, developed a computer simulation called World II, which modeled scores of human and environmental factors, in order to see what future the model would predict for the world. In brief, the simulation demonstrated catastrophic population collapse between 2040 and 2060, regardless of how the values of variables and their interactions were adjusted. The only stable simulations required that the world population be set to below its current (1970) value. Well, we can set aside their conclusions as peculiar to their particular set of assumptions, but in Jared Diamond's current book, he concludes that each of the individual, massive environmental issues covered in his various examples will reach catastrophic crisis by about 2050, if they are not addressed promptly and in a dramatic way. I find the correlation sobering.
From the standpoint purely of readable history, Collapse offers more credible conclusions about the decline of the societies it surveys than does the massive 12 volumes of Arnold Toynbee's A Study of History. Toynbee leaned heavily on Hegelian dialectic, Diamond on compelling archeological studies and on the physical sciences. Though a professor of geography, Diamond's formal training was in biology and physiol
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History, ecology, technology, politics, and a warning rolled into one... Jan 17, 2006 (125 of 141 found this helpful)
A debate between two camps continues to rage. One side thinks that the modern world continues to careen toward a non-sustainable future and impending doom. The other group thinks that "environmentalists" exaggerate their claims about a coming ecological crash. As usual the sides remain somewhat unproductively polarized with neither giving an inch to the other. This book's title exposes where Jared Diamond's sympathies stand, but he also takes some surprisingly neutral views. For one, he claims that some contemporary businesses have in fact successfully taken environmental concerns into consideration, and that these concerns have made them money and boosted their respect globally. Diamond doesn't believe that big business and environmental groups necessarily remain indissoluble enemies. And he goes further by suggesting that environmentalists should unabashedly praise those companies that have suceeded in balancing economics with ecology. "Collapse", though admittedly more slanted towards the environmental side of the continuum, nonetheless tries to narrow the gap between the two aforementioned camps.
"Collapse" takes the reader on a dizzying historical and global tour. The chapters weave in and out of modern, ancient, and medieval worlds. Along the way Diamond extrapolates which behaviors have threatened (or arguably are currently threatening) a significant inexorable decline in a particular society's population. By juxtaposing past and present societies he hopes to reveal the simularities between societies that no longer exist and the trends of the world today. The book surreptitously asks whether our current world is threatened by a global collapse.
Diamond uses a "five-point framework" to analyze various societies. These comprise certain behaviors and characterstics, namely, environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, friendly trade partners, and a society's responses to its environmental problems. With these tools in hand, Diamond travels to Montana, Easter Island, the Pitcairn and Henderson Islands, the ancient and medieval Anasazi cultures in North America, the Maya, Norse Greenland, New Guinea, Tikopia, Tokugawa-era Japan, Rwanda, Hispaniola, China, and Australia. Each of these societies, both past and present, receive analysis in terms of the five point framework. For example, the Greenland Norse collapsed, according to Diamond, due to all five factors. Whereas Easter Island collapsed only due to three. But Diamond also discusses past successes such as Tikopia and Tokugawa Japan. These two societies managed to control their resources and avoid the others' fate. And those fates included horrifying ends in wars, mass starvation, and sometimes cannabalism.
The discussion of Norse Greenland receives three full length chapters (which at times seems a little too lengthy). Why? In a talk that Diamond gave for the Long Now Foundation in 2005 (downloadable from the Foundation's website), he claimed that he wanted to show that collapse doesn't only happen to non-europeans. Some skeptics may claim that collapse only happens to so-called "primitives". But the Norse Greelanders were medieval Europeans who desperately tried to hold on to their European Christian roots in Greenland, but they all ended up dying sometime in the 15th century. The reasons why remain somewhat mysterious, though archeologists have found evidence of starvation and cannabalism at the long abandoned sites. By contrast, the Greenland Inuit long outlasted the Norse.
Diamond thinks that societies also need to re-evaluate their values to survive in different climates. In addition, when the elite begin isolating themselves that often spells trouble for a society. Diamond sees this happening in our world today (in "gated" communities and private funding for personal amenities) as well as evidence for all of the above listed five points. He argues that our current course appears unsustainable unless
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Society in decline isn't a done deal Jan 11, 2005 (42 of 46 found this helpful)
Diamond uses a five point model to examine societies that have declined and collapsed and those that have thrived due to change. Examining the Mayan culture, the people of Easter Island and others, Diamond presents a thoughtful anaylsis as to how these very different cultures (one isolated with no enemies but a rich land and culture badly overtaxed the other a rich culture that that had many contacts and enemies to complicate their lives)to present models that we can use today to deal with these issues regarding the environment, social pressure and others that face our culture.
Diamond's approach argues that none of these cultures were inferior and that they face the same ecological, environmental and, ultimately, social stressors as we do in our world today. He also takes a look at modern societies (including China and Australia)and how they are faring with the 12 modern types of environmental problems. In another section he looks at the good and bad that big business have contributed to the ecology. It's pretty fair balanced overall.
Diamond suggests that societies ultimately choose to fail or succeed based on their problem solving skills, ability to be flexible and change prior to crisis mode. Essentially we can either be victims or lead the charge for change. I didn't feel that an examination of past cultures was a flaw like some reviewers; he examines them in more depth because we already know the outcome and can more clearly trace the evoltionary path that led to their undoing. That path shows up again when examining our modern world and the ways that we are both feeding choas and living with the resources we have as a nation and world. His point about how important it is to understand all of this in a globalized culture seems valid; there are too many interconnected countires now (unlike the Easter Island situation where they were, essentially, isolated and didn't have an impact on other cultures when they finally fell)and if one falls, ultimately, it will have a domino effect on other countries as well putting our world at peril and not just one or two countries.
A warning about Diamond's book seems appropriate. It can be read by the lay person but the dense material might be daunting for some people. Skimming the book may give you can idea of the content but it won't have the same profound impact on your view of the world as reading it from cover to cover. I agree with Diamond's viewpoint on a single important point--change and flexibility will help a society thrive and a society that remains static, denies what occurs around it will fail.
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Overshoot and Collapse? Jan 9, 2005 (42 of 46 found this helpful)
This is another great contribution to the public's understanding of crucial issues from the UCLA geographer Jared Diamond. COLLAPSE is an examination of several societies that have collapsed (including Easter Island, the Vikings in Greenland, and the Mayas), as well as a few that have solved their ecological problems and succeeded. As in GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL, his previous Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Diamond takes a big-picture view. The lesson is clear -- we must take action to avoid the collapse of our interdependent global society. "Our world society is presently on a non-sustainable course," observes Diamond (p. 498).
My only criticism of this fine book is that it devotes nearly 500 pages to examining various collapses of the past, and only a brief section at the end to examine our present crisis. In Chapter 16 Diamond presents a summary of the evidence that we are in a condition of overshoot, and in danger of collapse if we stay on our present course. He says we need 1) long-term planning, and 2) a reconsideration of core values, in order to avoid going the way of the Mayas.
I would recommend that everyone who reads COLLAPSE also read LIMITS TO GROWTH: The 30-Year Update (see my review), which presents a much more thorough summary of the evidence Diamond mentions in his concluding chapter, and THE UPSIDE OF DOWN: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, by political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon. Once informed of our situation, a crucial book pointing toward the necessary answers is THE SOLAR ECONOMY by Hermann Scheer (see my review).
See my THE CLEAN/RENEWABLE ENERGY REVOLUTION list for more reading, including several books on the impending global Hubbert's Peak for oil.