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1-Page Summary of Collapse

Overall Summary

Following his best-selling book, Guns, Germs and Steel (1997), geologist Jared Diamond published a companion book in 2006 called Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. In that first book, he described how environments around the world helped or hindered human civilization. In this second one, he explains how environmental abuse ruined many past societies and threatens civilizations today.

The book Collapse discusses five major reasons why civilizations fall. The first is human ecological impacts, which leads to changes in climate and a hostile neighbor. A friendly neighbor who backs away from the civilization can also cause it to collapse. Societies that are unwilling to adapt will fail as well. Deforestation causes soil erosion, flooding, loss of wood products, crop failures and other environmental hazards.

Diamond uses examples to show that societies have often suffered ecological collapse because they ignored the warnings all around them. Societies reached their greatest heights just before a disaster, causing mass starvation and collapse.

The examples from the past can teach us how to fix our environment today. We’ve been destroying the environment for a long time, but we can learn from those who have gone before us and restore our ecosystem.

Part 1, “Modern Montana” examines a relatively pristine region in present-day America and takes its pulse for signs of environmental danger. Part 2, “Past Societies” examines several ancient cultures that failed because they abused their environments. The Easter Island society was obsessed with competitive monument-building and cut down all its trees which caused a catastrophe for the islanders. Further west, Pitcairn, Henderson, and Mangareva Islands became so degraded that their residents suffered a failure of trade as well as total extinction on Pitcairn and Henderson due to overpopulation, ecological burdens from climate change,and shift in weather patterns.

Societies can also suffer environmental catastrophes. The Mayan civilization, for example, was undermined by deforestation and warfare. They didn’t have sustainable practices in place that could support their population. The Vikings established colonies in the North Atlantic but they misused the forests there and suffered from famine because of it. However, some of those societies were able to learn from their mistakes and survive whereas others did not.

In parts 3 and 4, Diamond explains how two societies have handled environmental problems. One society used a bottom-up approach to resolve its issues; the other used top-down management. Both approaches were successful. In part 5, he examines four nations in modern times that are at risk of collapse due to overpopulation and overfarming or already suffering from such calamities as civil war and genocide. Two of these countries—the Dominican Republic and Haiti—share an island but have very different social histories, which led them down opposite paths: one has sustained itself while the other is still struggling.

The largest country in the world, China has 12 environmental issues to deal with. Australia is a large continent with few people; it’s suffering from deforestation and over-farming that cause soil damage, loss of wood resources and fisheries, and tainted water supplies.

In part 4, Diamond explains why societies failed to recognize their own imminent collapse. He also warns that modern society is making the same mistakes as those in history and compares the good and bad approaches of oil companies to environmental damage.

The revised 2011 edition of the book explains why Angkor’s empire collapsed in the 1300s. The 615-page book also contains 42 photographs, 32 pages of annotated bibliography, and an index.