Collapse - Jared Diamond

Welcome my new books and brews series!

Brew: Berliner Weisse by Prison City Brewing 4/5 

Slightly sour with a light-body and incredible citrus notes.  3.5% Abv

Book: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed 3.5/5 

I'm finally getting around to reading this one.  Sometimes I feel like reading or watching something after the hype has died down is the most sober way to assess it.  Unfortunately, as I was putting the finishing touches on this review, CNN broke news on an environmental cataclysm of the identical type Diamond had written on.  More on that in a bit. 

I had some critiques of the book's layout, but honestly, I just want to get to the crux of the story after the event.  Diamond lays out a five point argument as to why societies collapse, with environmental damage, climate change and social responses to those factors dominating the book.  His writing ranges from boringly technical to infuriatingly riveting.  His assessment of Montana begins the book, looking at how first the mining industry, and now the vacationing uber-rich have decimated the environment and economy.  The most saddening part of the book is how after all the damage done to economies, workers, and the environment, the profit margins remain miserably low, and native, year-round Montana residents remain tremendously poor: 

"The price that a farmer receives for milk and beef today is virtually the same as 20 years ago..." 

Beyond the toil of the rural workers, Montana as a whole would have been economically better off if it had forgone its proud mining history and imported all its copper, after the multi-billion dollar cleanup costs are factored in.  Diamond's assessment only gets more desperate from there, looking at misguided forest management leading to raging wildfires, climate change hurting the water supply, and the public's anti-government attitude hindering Montana's ability to collectively combat any of the above.  

Diamond goes on for several more chapters and several more societies, demonstrating each time how a pattern of ecological and economic exploitation drive them into non-existence.  The book wraps up with 12 ways that society is threatening its own survival, emphasizing overpopulation relative to consumption rates most of all.  Diamond concludes that he is a "cautious optimist", realizing the issues are grave, but within humankind's ability to remedy.  

I liked this book, but at times it seemed a bit too jumbled. The book's attempt to create a grand narrative of social catastrophe makes for unusual bedfellows; I'm sorry, but I just can't get over the jump from Montana to Easter Island.  I get it.  We all get it.  Learn from the past.  Just turn on the news.  I mean it, do it now if you're reading this post close to its publication date.  Odds are you're going to see this: 

Three million gallons of waste from a century old mining operation, dumped into the Animas River.  This is the exact predicament Diamond warns us of.  The heavy mining operations leave poorly constructed dams to hold back millions of gallons with toxic sludge.  Sometimes these dams break.  Is all this "progress" worth it?    

My conclusions:  

Buy the book (used or ebook...keep it Green)


Consume less
Find an environmental group to work with
Do whatever else you can