Collapse

A pretty interesting read, relatively speaking, of course. He highlights a series of different societies and how they, well, collapsed. The theme was that they exhausted their environment of resources by either unsustainable practices or by overpopulation and compounded it all by developing a complex interdependent, single-point-of failure social structure. When resources became too scarce, they starved, fought or both into oblivion. He also highlights some success stories where population control and sustainable practices have allowed societies to remain almost unchnaged for thousands of years. He warns we are headed on the same path but we have the power to make changes. That message may be familiar to many, however, the techniques by which he reaches his conclusions are definitely interesting. Finally, this was the abridged version, I looked at the paperback to see what I was missing. Turns out he points out that India's caste system might have been responsible for ecologically sound and sustainable practices that has allowed India to prosper for so long. I guess nothing is black and white.

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