Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Jared Diamond
Image from: GM Mac Donald Views From the Edge of Time
"How we determine the future of tomorrow depends on the choices we make today." - Jared Diamond
In This essay Diamond mentioned some of the environmental problems we are facing today are: population explosions, climate change, and resource depletion on a global scale. These problems are linked to the collapse of a society; how we choose to address these problems will determine rather we fail or succeed.
A collapse city are cities that are facing dramatic change (decrease) in human population/political/economical/social complexity for an extended amount of time. These problems are mostly caused by ecological problems, as Diamond stated: Ecocide. According to Diamond there are eight categories to ecocide: deforestation, habitat destruction, soil problems, water management problems, over hunting, over fishing, invasive species, human population growth (increase), increase per capita impact of people. Diamond also adds four more new categories that we are currently facing now: human caused climate change, build up of toxic chemicals, energy shortages, and full human utilization of Earth's photosynthetic capacity. These four categories are globally critical for the next few decades.
Some factors that Diamond has mention separates us from past societies. These are: modern technology, globalization, modern medicine and greater knowledge of past societies. These factors make us less susceptible to ecocide. Modern technology enables us to use secondary resources such as wind and solar energy. Globalization allows us to depend on other civilizations for resources that we lack of, modern medicine sustains our health to the spread of diseases and knowledge of the past helps us making the same mistakes twice. Of course these factors have it's negative affect as well.
Another difference that separates us from past societies is that our modern society today are economically centralized. People today are hugely influenced by corporate companies. Diamond couples the word business with environment because without the cooperation of big companies, we would not be able to solve some of the current environmental problems.
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