BOOK REVIEW Societies don't die by accident - they commit ecological suicide

Book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed"
from the http://www.csmonitor.com December 28, 2004 edition

How to succeed in history
Societies don't die by accident - they commit ecological suicide
By David Shi

Full story
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1228/p15s01-bogn.html
[excerpt]

COLLAPSE: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
By Jared Diamond
Viking
575 pp., $29.95

"Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" is remarkable for
its ambitious sweep and interpretive panache. Diamond studies four
ancient societies across space and time: Easter Island in Polynesia,
the native American Anasazi tribe in what is now the southwestern
United States, the Maya civilization in Central America, and the
isolated Viking settlement on the coast of Greenland. Although
diverse in nature and context, these four societies experienced what
Diamond calls "ecocide," unintentional ecological suicide.

[...]

In each case, though, what ultimately caused ecocide was a series of
flawed responses to societal crises. Environmental degradation does
not ensure collapse. A society's fate, Diamond concludes, depends
upon how it manages challenging situations.

He reveals, for instance, how the Vikings who settled in Greenland
after AD 984 established a pastoral economy, raising sheep, goats,
and cattle. They also hunted caribou and seal, and developed a
flourishing trade in walrus ivory with Norway. But 300 years later,
the Vikings vanished from Greenland. Documentary sources along with
physical evidence reveal that their settlements gradually experienced
deforestation and soil erosion. A colder climate in the 14th and 15th
centuries impeded commerce with Norway and reduced the production of
hay, which diminished their herds.

At the same time that the Vikings were being cut off from Norway, the
Inuits began attacks on the Norse settlements in Greenland. Cultural
prejudices prevented the Vikings from adopting Inuit technologies,
such as harpoons, so they could not harvest whales. Nor were they
willing to mimic the Inuits in developing dog sleighs, sealskin
kayaks, and seagoing boats. As a result of these cultural prejudices,
by 1440 the Vikings had all died out in Greenland, whereas the Inuits
survive to this day.

Diamond's perspective is not solely historical. He also discusses
contemporary developments in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti, China, and
Australia, as well as in Montana, a state that once was among the
wealthiest in the nation but now struggles with poverty, population
decline, and environmental problems.

Diamond complements his sobering analysis of collapsed civilizations
with more uplifting examples of societies that have found ways to
sustain themselves without overexploiting their environments.

What determines a society's fate, Diamond concludes, is how well its
leaders and citizens anticipate problems before they become crises,
and how decisively a society responds. Such factors may seem obvious,
yet Diamond marshals overwhelming evidence of the short-sightedness,
selfishness, and fractiousness of many otherwise robust cultures. He
reveals that many leaders were (and are) so absorbed with their own
pursuit of power that they lost sight of festering systemic problems.

Today, Diamond observes, the world is "on a nonsustainable course,"
but he remains a "cautious optimist." The problems facing us are
stern, he notes, but not insoluble. They demand stiff political will,
a commitment to long-term thinking, and a willingness to make painful
changes in what we value.

[...]

He concludes, "We have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of
distant peoples and past peoples." But the question remains, will we?

*David Shi is the president of Furman University in Greenville, S.C.