Books - Collapse

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	Books - Collapse

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is a 2005 English-language book by University of California, Los Angeles geography professor Jared M. Diamond, (ISBN 0143036556).

The broad premise of Diamond's book is that it deals with "societal collapses involving an environmental component, and in some cases also contributions of climate change, hostile neighbors, and trade partners, plus questions of societal responses" (p. 15). In writing the book Diamond intended that its readers should learn from history (p. 23).

Synopsis

Collapse is divided into four parts.

Part One describes the environment of the US state of Montana, focusing on the lives of several individuals in order to put a human face on the interplay between society and the environment
Part Two describes past societies that have collapsed. Diamond uses a "framework" when considering the collapse of a society, consisting of five "sets of factors" that may affect what happens to a society: environmental damage, climatic change, hostile neighbors, loss of trading partners, and the society's own responses to its environmental problems. The societies Diamond describes are:
* Easter Island (a society that collapsed entirely due to environmental damage)
* The Polynesians of Pitcairn Island (environmental damage and loss of trading partners)
* The Anasazi of the Southwestern USA (environmental damage and climate change)
* The Maya of Central America (environmental damage, climate change, and hostile neighbours)
* The Greenland Norse, whose society collapsed owing to all five factors, including the final one (unwillingness to change in the face of social collapse).
* Finally, Diamond discusses three past success stories:
** The tiny Pacific island of Tikopia
** The agricultural success of central New Guinea
** The Tokugawa-era forest management in Japan.
Part Three examines modern societies, including:
* The collapse into genocide of Rwanda, caused in part by overpopulation
* The failure of Haiti compared with the relative success of its neighbour, the Dominican Republic
* The problems facing a Third World nation, China
* The problems facing a First World nation, Australia
Part Four concludes the study by considering such subjects as business and globalization, and "extracts practical lessons for us today" (p. 22 – 23). Attention is given to the polder model as a way Dutch society has addressed its challenges.

In the prologue, Diamond previews Collapse in one paragraph, as follows.

:This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapses to which environmental problems contribute. My previous book (Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies), had applied the comparative method to the opposite problem: the differing rates of buildup of human societies on different continents over the last 13,000 years. In the present book focusing on instead of collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability. The "output" variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses. (p. 18)

Reviews

Tim Flannery

Tim Flannery (as cited in "References") gave Collapse a warm review in Science, writing

:"... the fact that one of the world's most original thinkers has chosen to pen this mammoth work when his career is at his apogee is itself a persuasive argument that Collapse must be taken seriously. It is probably the most important book you will ever read."

The Economist

The Economist's review (see 'References' below) was generally favorable, although the anonymous reviewer had two disagreements. Firstly, the reviewer felt Diamond was not optimistic enough about the future. Secondly, the reviewer claimed Collapse contains some erroneous statistics: for instance, Diamond supposedly overstated the number of starving people in the world.

William Rees

University of British Columbia professor of ecological planning (see "References" below) wrote that Collapse's most important lesson is that societies most able to avoid collapse are the ones that are most agile; they are able to adopt practices favorable to their own survival and avoid unfavorable ones. Moreoever, Rees wrote that Collapse is "a necessary antidote" to followers of Julian Simon, such as Bjørn Lomborg who authored The Skeptical Environmentalist
. Rees explained this assertion as follows:

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