Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- "Ozymandias" by P. B. Shelley

O Noble Head! Adorned with the
Tilak and well-groomed hair
You who planned to rule the world
Have become a worthless skull...

(free translation of a famous song from the Malayalam movie "Harishchandra")

Well, well, well...this book is a masterpiece. It's taken me a long time (at least to my standards) to finish the last chapters, but even though Diamond doesn't get to the point as quickly as he could, the read is definetely worht it.
By using collapsed societies' examples, the author explains the factors that determine the success or failure of a society, combining historical knowledge with climatic, biological, antropological and geographical ones.
In risk to oversimplify the book, I'd say that Diamond's whole point is something close to "don't be fucking idiots and take care of the planet".

I collapsed after reading this. What a slog. Good, but dense, detailed, and darn long. I don't particularly care for Jared Diamond's writing style. He's detailed, scholarly, and repetitive. There is so much information I had to take frequent breaks and snatch some quick reads in-between chapters. I almost abandoned it a few times but then I'd find a different chapter interesting and get hooked again. Diamond has solid arguments for explaining why societies collapse and while fascinating, he's overly detailed in spots - at least for me. His thesis shows five factors that influence the collapse of a society: environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, decreased support by friendly neighbors, and society's response to environmental problems. The book is full of great information and I can see recommending students to read certain chapters, but not the whole shebang - unless they are persistent readers.

Many of the societies he examines collapsed because of their fragile environments. While Diamond doesn't play judge and is sympathetic toward those who made decisions that were wrong and caused the downfall of their societies from ancient to modern times, he is judgmental against those who obviously don't care about the environment, who "rape-and-run" making quick cash and leave environmental disasters for citizens and governments to clean up. He balances this analysis of greedy businesses with stellar businesses whose good practices show how everyone can benefit when a company creates a product that respects the environment.

"Environmental determinism" looks at the physical environment such as climate and geography trying to determine how it affects societies. This concept has had negative press over the years and has led to some people using racism or superiority of intellect over other cultures based the oppressor being smarter than the suppressed group of people. Diamond is always refuting this and he also takes his studies further looking at multiple aspects of a hypothesis that include climate, geography, botany, science, economics and more. It is one reason his books are so dense and slow to read. But they are fascinating and require thoughtful reflection.

He has quite a few great quotes and I would have expanded on them if my Nook eReader hadn't deleted all my highlights. I will try to remember some from my bad memory. The genocide in Rwanda was a product of land disputes, deforestation, exports, and too many people living in extreme poverty. There was a direct correlation between starvation and increased crime. Diamond explains how the ethnic violence was not based solely on ethnic hatred but tied in with land disputes. The argument is compelling and interesting. Australia's fragile environment is a great chapter to read as well.

Diamond discusses the rarity of a leader who has the courage to anticipate a potential problem and take steps to solve it before it becomes a crisis. "Such leaders expose themselves to criticism or ridicule before it becomes obvious to everyone that some action is necessary." Think of all the leaders you've come across in your life that surround themselves with people that tell them what they want to hear. The ability to listen to criticism and use it constructively and not be corrupted by power is not the norm.

I thought "Collapse" and "Gun, Germs, and Steel" both had first chapters that were hard to get through. This one is too detailed on Montana and slowed the pacing. The ancient societies that collapsed were not quite as interesting as the modern ones as his analysis is more complex because he has more information to prove his hypothesis. The author is quite brilliant and worth reading.

n  They took all the trees, and put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them
***
Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot
Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchelln

This book is the second in a series by this author that began with Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, which I read and reviewed. In that book the author deals with the question of why some societies/people are more successful than others. This book serves as a supplement to that book in that it examines the same question, but here his primary focus is on the environmental factors and the ways that societies respond to them. He gives short histories of various civilizations, both ancient and modern, and the environmental problems that they created or faced. These histories describe civilizations that collapsed or are collapsing and contrasts them with civilizations that succeeded in managing their environment.

There are several environmental factors that affected these civilizations. The list contains things like climate change, soil erosion, water management, overpopulation, introduced foreign pests, toxic wastes, and many others. His main focus is on deforestation, which in many cases contributed to some of the other problems.

Some of the environmental problems can be linked to something the author refers to as the “tragedy of commons.” This is when a community all harvests a resource from a common source, for instance, a forest, a communal pasture for grazing, or the fish in the ocean or a river. Because it is a shared resource, but lacks effective regulation there is no compulsion for an individual to limit their harvest. This has led to many resources being over-harvested and destroyed.

The author does point out some positive trends. He uses a Top-Down and Bottom-Up framework to discuss some success stories. An example of a successful country’s management of their environment is Japan. They realized early that due to their isolation from other countries the people depended on their own natural resources and took steps to prevent things like over-harvesting. In China the government has instituted the one child rule, and also implemented some positive programs to save their environment. These were examples of Top-Down approach in that it was the leaders of the country that implemented the conservation measures. In describing the situation on the South Pacific island of Tikopia he describes a Bottom-Up approach. This civilization had no strong central government so the people themselves implemented measures to save their environment and control population. They made a decision to kill every pig on the island because they were destroying gardens even though they were a source of protein.

He describes the per-capita impact of humans. This is the average resource consumption and waste production of one person. This impact is much higher in First World countries than in Third World countries. However, with the globalization of communication people in Third World countries want the same standard of living as those they see living in First World countries. This impact is also increasing due to increased immigration to First World countries and the subsequent assumption of their living standard. One observer is quoted as saying “The apocalypse here will not take the form of an earthquake or hurricane, but of a world buried in garbage.” (Page 351)

Just like maintaining the health of our bodies, preventing environmental messes is cheaper in the long run. The financial costs resulting from people getting sick from air pollution, the increase in prices due to the destruction of fish habitat, the time spent in traffic, the cleanup of toxic chemicals, and the lack of clean water can run into the billions. The horrific view is that if ancient civilizations collapsed due to environmental problems with their primitive tools and relatively small populations, what impact might we have with our heavy machinery and nuclear power.

This was a very educational read for me. In addition to learning a context in which to think about our environmental problems, I learned valuable lessons in the histories of some civilizations which I doubt I would have ever read. However, the book did become a slog at times. Many of the histories seemed to repeat things and it got a little wordy. The Norse settlement in Greenland lasted about 500 years and it seemed to take that long to read.

This is an important book. Unlike the Norse of Greenland, or the Polynesian natives on Easter Island, we cannot plea ignorance of our environmental problems. Unfortunately many people who make some of those decisions choose to ignore this problem. As the author points out a few times (and I paraphrase):

n  The rich and powerful only earn the privilege of being the last ones to starve.n

I like the choice of the word "choose" in the sub-title. While the world collapses around us, too many Americans think our problems are abortion, prayer in school, terrorism, immigration, and a lot of other not-shit issues. Meanwhile we have completely ignored issues like renewable energy, sustainable cities, and mass transportation. We are going to make Easter Island and the Norse settlements in Greenland look like the most well thought out societies in history because, baby, when we go down, we are going down hard. And we are choosing to do so. I guess we are all too busy with "So You Think You Can Dance" to give much thought to our collective futures.

A thorough and thoroughly depressing analysis of how societies past and presents have overpopulated, eaten, deforested, fought, and generally short-sighted and stubborned their way out of their own survival. "Oh, but that was then, now we're smarter and have ever better technology" - yeah, but uhm, we're not, and our better technologies are bringing their own host of massive, massive environmental issues. If the Easter Islanders managed to go extinct while armed with axes, we're able to do it so much more efficiently now. Very interesting, very depressing.

One of Cambridge Sustainability's Top 50 Books for Sustainability, as voted for by our alumni network of over 3,000 senior leaders from around the world. To find out more, click here.

Collapse examines various societies throughout history that have collapsed (Easter Island, Pitcairn, the Maya, Anasazi, the Vikings/Norse in Greenland) and compares these to societies that faced similar conditions and yet succeeded (Japan, New Guinea Highlands, the Vikings/Norse in Iceland). Diamond identifies five factors that define collapse or success.

Looking specifically at environmental impacts, Diamond identifies various forms of historical 'ecocide', including deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinisation and loss of soil fertility), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, the effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth and increased per capita impact of people. There is evidence of all these dangers in modern society.

Although I only gave this book three stars, I can recommend it a little bit over that. I found it interesting, but not quite as compelling as I might have if I wasn’t already familiar with some parts of the story. I took graduate classes in International Relations, specializing in China as well as international political economy, so I didn’t find any surprises in the abstract background to Collapse.

Some very intriguing parts were the stories of collapse of vanished societies, as many have noted in other reviews. But also quite enjoyable were the explanations for why others did not collapse, especially the near-miss of the Tokugawa Shogunate as prosperity almost led them to devastate their forests — it is almost an accident of history that the Japanese home islands aren’t as barren as Easter Island.

The chapter on modern Australia was also quite eye-opening. After reading this litany of miseries, all I can say to my Australian friends is “Good luck, mate. You’re gonna need it.” I think everyone living on the edge of the Pacific Ocean needs to spend more time studying the ENSO — El Niño Southern Oscillation. It will certainly have a major impact on California, too.

Perhaps my favorite portion of the book were Chapters 14 and 15, in which Diamond explores societal responses to these threats.

Chapter 14 is titled “Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?” and begins with a tidy discussion of decision theory and cognitive biases. I suspect a professional Decision Theorist might scoff at the oversimplification and lacunae of his explanation, but Diamond can place it in a riveting real-world context that cements how a careful analysis can help us understand such twisted and paradoxical situations. (In this I am reminded of the fascinating classic n  Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisisn.)

This chapter allowed him to answer a question he was asked by a student: “When that person cut down the last palm tree on Easter Island, what on earth could they have been thinking?” turns out to have a rather obvious answer: by the time that last palm was cut down, centuries of deforestation had already taken place, and the crucial cultural importance of those trees would have long since disappeared.

Chapter 15, “Big Business and the Environment,” is also quite absorbing. Diamond contrasts the very different environmental impact of two oil fields, and continues with the particular problems of hardrock mining, coal mining, logging and fisheries. His inquiry into why some corporations and industries are are more amenable to social pressure casts a minor hopeful note into the symphony of despair.

There are a few complaints that need to be aired.

First, Diamond could really use a forceful editor with an eye towards clarity. The professor is very prolix, with a pedantic tendency to repeat himself. For example, every time Diamond referred to palynology, he felt compelled to explain it again. In such a large book which undoubtedly took many years to compose, this is understandable — but not in the final draft. That’s why editors are supposed to employed. Perhaps asking him to be succinct is asking too much, but it would be nice to nudge him in that direction.

Second, while his “Further Reading” appendix is welcome, it doesn’t excuse the lack of a bibliography, especially since index doesn’t seem to cover that appendix.

Finally, the book starts out on a weak note in Montana. His affection for the Bitterroot Valley is understandable, but its problems are nowhere near as engrossing and dramatic as those that follow, and the relevance of a struggling rural community tucked deep inside the world’s wealthiest nation makes it hard to understand its relevance. It would have been best left to personalize and clarify a concluding chapter, perhaps, although the chapter on Australia did a more than adequate job of showing how pressing the threats of collapse can be in a modern first-world society.

In the end, while this book was adequately absorbing, it didn’t bring me much closer to my quest. No book I’ve yet found has adequately discussed the question “How likely is it that the entire global civilization will collapse in the coming century, leading to centuries of a new ‘dark age’ of reduced life expectancy, welfare and technology?”
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