Environment Andrew Kun on 14 Jun 2008 08:29 pm
Avoiding the collapse
I’m finishing Jared Diamond’s book Collapse. As the subtitle tells us, this book discusses how societies fail (that is how they collapse) or succeed.
Diamond argues that one reason societies collapse is that they consume certain resources at unsustainable levels. E.g. a society may consume too much timber which may lead to deforestation. Deforestation can lead to soil erosion, and this in turn can result in reduced agricultural productivity, the result of which can be a food shortage and even societal collapse. Unfortunately, unsustainable levels of consumption are a global problem in our world. You can read Diamond’s concise argument on unsustainable First World consumption levels in his recent New York Times opinion piece.
Andrew Kun
on 19 Jun 2008 at 9:50 am 1.Alexander said …
I found this book very interesting and well written as well. If we compare this book to “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn (http://www.eceblogger.com/?p=79) we can see two different approaches to the same question: “What causes a collapse?”