The King’s Green Pad

photo credit: Torley

I just recently read a book for one of my classes here at King’s and I was intrigued by what I read so I decided that I would share it with you. The book that I am referring to is Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. It is probably one of the best books i was assigned to read so far. It gave examples of different societies in the past and also modern societies that are dealing with or dealt with environmental problems and they were left with a choice. One of the examples that was given was about a place called Easter Island that is found in the Pacific. I had no idea this place existed until now. Basically the people there canoed hundreds of miles over open seas to find this tiny little island full of birds and trees and they colonized it. Then the people started to build statues and place them throughout the island, having statues of solid rock weighing up to 32 tons placed miles away from where they were sculpted. All this was done with very few tools and pure human muscles. That is impressive. Many people believe that there were tribes that competed against each other in order to build the bigger statue, one tribe was able to put up a large statue and then place a separate 12 ton cylindrical shape hat on top of it. How? I have no idea, but they did it. The only problem was that this major competition between tribes led to the use of a lot of the resources on the island, especially the large palm trees. Now the island is completely and utterly deforested. Everyone that existed in that time period is dead from starvation and the island has lost most of its nutrients and productive soil. It seems a little ridiculous just for some silly statues.  Sure it’s impressive, but was it really worth the life of a whole society? So then how can you apply it to our society? Some people are building some spectacular houses, and are driving some pretty sweet cars. But with all the damage that it is doing to our environment is it really worth it? One of Jared Diamond’s main points in the book is the idea of a choice that we have as individuals in a society to choose between our failure and success. I don’t know about you, but personally I am willing to give up some sports car and a mansion so that future generations will actually have a chance to survive.

This post was authored by Jeff Veenstra, a student in the Environmental Studies program at The King’s University College.

For some book reviews on Collapse check out:

Culture and Society

Pebble Collector

Circling The Drain