Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

What’s this about?

Jared Diamond looks into how societies fail or “collapse”.  And by collapse he means “…a drastic decrease in human population size and/or political/economic/social complexity, over a considerable area, for an extended time.”  Straight to the point and extremely engaging to read as I was hoping.  I was impressed by Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and couldn’t wait to read his incites on societies as a whole and their proverbial “lives.”  My first draw to the book was the section on Easter Island as I knew nothing about the area other than there were giant rock sculptures possibly put there by aliens.  My curiousity was peaked.  It also contains a section on China which was relevant to me as I’ll be traveling with my Cal Poly MBA class to China and India this summer on a business exchange.

The book covers a few example societies that fall into one or all of the environmental damaging categories:

• Deforestation and habitat destruction
• Soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses)
• Water management problems
• Overhunting
• Overfishing
• Effects of introduced species on native species
• Human population growth
• Increased per-capita impact of people

All societies that have collapsed over time have exhibited some of these environmental problems.  Interestingly enough all of the collapses are always due to some form of environment damage.  By environment we’re told by Diamond not to assume just natural environment but also economic as they are tied together quite closely.  He does an amazing job of providing rigorous historical evidence to explain each societies collapse in the book.

Here’s a list of the societies covered in the book.  Maybe one of them will spark your interest as Easter Island and China did for me.

• Contemporary Montana: Bitterroot Valley
• Easter Island
• Pitcairn and Henderson Islands
• The Anasazi and Chaco
• Maya’s Collapse
• Viking’s and Iceland
• Norse Greenland
• Rwanda’s Genocide
• The Dominican Republic and Haiti
• China
• Australia

All of these societies are used to illustrate different concepts of collapse.  Once they’ve all been outlined and the concepts have been made clear a section on practical lessons applies them to our current American society and the world as a whole.  How do we prevent our own collapse?  What areas of business can we look at to prevent this and how we as consumers we prevent our own demise?  The book covers it all and in very entertaining and enthralling stories that you can pay attention too and identify with.

Why should I care?

Well if you haven’t been bitten by the sustainability bug this book gives a good smart chomp.  We see examples about how the Norse ultimately died off in Greenland because they brought their European practices to an environment that could not support nor had the weather to support their agriculture habits that worked back on Iceland.  Or how the Easter Islanders slowly cut down all the forest on their island and without even realizing it condemned themselves to starvation.  Not only was it not as if one of them went out and chopped down the last palm tree but rather that slowly the new palms were not growing back in fast enough for their societies need.  If they had known to manage their tree population much more efficiently they would have survived and prospered on the island until now.

China’s chapter was one of the most eye opening chapters I read.  We are all aware of the cheap labor they provide as well as the benefits to business and the bottom line.   But were we all aware that we send all our trash there?  That not only are they producing enough pollution to condemn the rest of the world but we’re helping them and encouraging them to do so.  As an MBA heading out into the business world I found this especially inspiring.  How can we do business with China and make them realize the damage their doing to the environment is not sustainable.  That in a few more years they will be beyond repair and not only will they personally be close to collapse, but the rest of the world will see the drastic effects as well.  Their air, water and soil quality is already dangerously low.  I’m hoping that their government realizes how important their environment is during the next couple of months and the upcoming 2008 Olympics. We’ve seen a few candidates drop out due to not wanting to perform in the horrid air in Beijing.

Diamond goes on to put a price on these environmental sacrifices that China is supposedly making to make money and do business with the west.

• $72 million per year to battle alligator weed (introduced from Brazil and is damaging crops)
• $250 million per year (and rising) for factory closures due to water shortages
• $540 million per year in Xian for sand storm damages on buildings and crops
• $730 million per year damage to crops from acid rain
• $6 billion a year for damages to the “green wall” of trees being built to shield Beijing against sand and dust
• $7 billion a year for the losses created by other species other than the alligator weed
• $27 billion for floods
• $42 billion for for desertification and loss of water
• $54 billion for air pollution

The later two make up 14% of China’s GDP.  Hopefully this is starting to sink in to a few of you and inspire you to check out this book.  We all need to know how to become sustainable and live in the environment we have without damaging it.  Both economically as well as ecologically.

Are there any weaknesses?

I’ve read a few reviews online that complained of not enough detail for the concentrated eye.  I didn’t run across this problem but I’m not an expert on the subject so I could see someone who’s well versed in the field wanting more evidence.  The book provided me with more than enough examples but the lack of pure data could be seen as a downfall.  In my opinion I wouldn’t have been able to have paid as much attention as I did if it had more raw numbers.

I would suggest the little bit of optimism that Diamond tries to inject into the book doesn’t serve any purpose other than to try and sugar coat something that doesn’t need to be sugar coated.  This topic needs to impact people.  We can’t think things will be okay if we ignore them.  It’s almost too late to fix our situation so in order to repair what we’ve damaged, we need to work extra hard to be sustainable.

Further Thoughts

I think I will read this book again.  It’s not very many books I wish to re-read but this and Guns, Germs and Steel have left a mark on me.  They provide many business incites into how to communicate with those around you as well as how to profit from optimizing your business and life.  Things that didn’t sink in entirely the first time I read them and will most likely require a review later on.  I think the title of the book could be made to be less harsh and hopefully more encouraging.  So more people will read it with the mindset that they need to be listening, not just enjoying the story and then continue on with their lives as normal.  As we learn in the book, as a society we really only get one chance.  If you knock down all your trees you can’t just buy more.  They’re gone.  For good.  I say trees when really I’m just using them as a symbol to encompass everything that’s important to us as a species and to the earth as a whole.  We only have one earth.  It may sound very “hippyish” or tree-hugger but we really do need to protect our environment to survive.