"; if(is_file("header.php")) include "header.php"; else include "../header.php"; ?>

A Good Read, but Somewhat Myopic Jared Diamond's "Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" is a good discription of how people's choices result in the success or failure of their societies. Unfortunately the collapses he describes are of small societies on the fringes of the habitable world. He doesn't investigate the really big collapses, like the Roman Empire, which were mostly caused by external invasions. And his view is somewhat US-centric. For instance, he doesn't notice that Montana's big problem is not that it is short of resources, but that it borders on three Texas-sized Canadian provinces with vastly greater resources. Montana prospered when it had the biggest copper deposits on the planet but now all it has left is big holes in the ground, and everything else it produces is much more plentiful and cheaper north of the border. His last example, California is a really good example of really bad choices. California did well when it was relatively empty, but now it is populated to European densities. He considers the problem to be overpopulation, but the density is fine if you adopt a European lifestyle - live in small townhouses or apartments, take public transportation to work, and high-speed rail to nearby cities. However, it is too high if people want to drive big SUV's enormous distances down the freeways. The problem is that, like the Greenland Norse, Californians would rather die than change. As I was taking Calgary's wind-powered electric train home from work today, I considered the choices we have made. While we here north of Montana have vastly greater oil reserves than are left in the US, we find it more efficient to sell them to the US than use them ourselves. That way the air pollution goes to California and the wealth goes to Canada. As Diamond says, it's an opportunity to learn from other people's mistakes.