Of the eight forms of ECOcide that Diamond talks about across examples of past failed societies, choose one to discuss in depth. Bring up as many specific examples of it both in the book as well as contemporary examples you see happening. One paragraph is acceptable as long as you're concise and coherent.
Good luck getting everything else done!
-R
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Soil issues have surfaced time after time in the past failed societies discussed by Jared Diamond in Collapse. Historically, when the soil fails (due to things such as erosion, salinization, and soil fertility loss), the society may go down with it. In Norse Greenland, the livestock grazed away so much of the grass that the wind could reach the topsoil and carried it away. When a society’s soil dies, it is possible that the society will follow, because it can causes a series of destructive events. Without soil, or with insufficient soil, crops cannot be grown sufficiently; livestock go hungry, leaving the society without much in the way of food. Issues of soil also occurred in Haiti, Rwanda, Montana, China and Australia. Diamond illustrates how important soil is to a society and if it fails or succeeds. “…Soil problems contributed to the collapse of all past societies discussed in this book” (490).
ReplyDeleteDiamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005.
In the last several centuries, human have lived lifestyles that prove to be detrimental to the environment. It wasn’t until the past few decades that any sort of green action for environmental reform took place. Therefore, it’s not hard to believe the unsettling truth that a handful of modern societies are already on the verge of collapse. Author Jared Diamond writes of the lessons that should be learned from collapsed societies of the past, notably those on Easter Island, the ancient Mayans, and Greenland’s Norse. In each of these societies, citizens striped their land bare of resources. In the end, these societies were left with nothing to survive on, leading to an inevitable extinction of these ancient peoples. Notably, the inhabitants of Easter Island saw their forests as vast supplies of lumber. Cutting down trees to construct anything from homes to boats to weapons, the people of Easter Island failed to replenish their forests with plenty of new trees. As a result, the forests diminished ultimately to nothing. While their survival depended so greatly on the forests, the islanders quickly became extinct once their supply was gone. Jared Diamond uses the example set by the failed society found on Easter Island as a warning to modern societies with similar problems, in hope of inspiring some sort of change. Without new approaches to natural resources, people in these failing societies cannot expect a positive future for their civilization.
ReplyDeleteDiamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005.
One of the 8 ecocides is a Water management problem. Water quality is one of the most important aspects of a society, and therefore it is in the best interests of a nation to have a good policy regarding these issues. It is one of the contributing factors to China’s environmental issues. The water quality is on a decline, due to waste from industry discharges and aqua cultural runoffs of fertilizers and pesticides. For this reason, China is not rich in fresh water causes cities to suffer from shortages and halt in industry. This issue has been around through much of china’s history, and has lead to a current problem for the society. Poor water quality contributes to poor soil, among many other issues. Because China is connected too much of the world through trade among the water, their issues unfortunately are passed on to other countries, and are affecting environments around them, as well as in larger picture the economy of ours and many other nations as well.
ReplyDeleteDiamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005.
One of the most important environmental issues that has proven to contribute to the collapse of societies is water—which ultimately has an impact on soil, the forest, and the species that inhabit the land. One of the most prominent examples can be seen in comparing and contrasting Haiti and the Dominican Republic. From an aerial perspective, as seen in images presented in Trumpey’s lecture…the forest and color of the trees and land are drastically different. The Dominican is projecting a lush green while Haiti is brown and dry. A huge reason is the fertilization and care of the soil—especially in equatorial regions that are so arid and dry. Without a natural supply of water—other means must be taken to take care of the land, which supplies food and other resources for survival. The same can be said for the droughts that have occurred in the Maya civilizations. More than just providing food, water also lends way for trade and migration—both of which are vital to bring good in and out and promote economic growth. Specifically this can be seen on islands such as the Pitcairn.
ReplyDeleteToday, water is just as important to survival as it has proven to be from these collapsed societies. The township I was raised in constantly struggles with water issues ranging from a surplus to a drought. Around the time of Hurricane Floyd, there was way too much water in my rough topographic neighborhood (so adequately named Short Hills). This water led to flooding and destruction of many properties. We’ve also experienced droughts in which our local reservoirs have been depleted and we’ve had to put restrictions on gardening and personal usage so we didn’t deplete the supply that would be needed for the environment. Our cautious use and restrained has allowed my township to remain economically stable but such an issue is a prime way to lead to the downfall of a particular area.
One of the biggest issues that happen in failed societies is damaging the environment through deforestation. Diamond talks about how the people of Easter Island cut down all the trees on the small island. When these people did this, they ruined their way of life. They were no longer able to build structures to fish in, and lose a great amount of resources from the loss of trees. Because the island used trees so much, the society began to become dependent on tress for their way of life. I think that when societies become too dependent on a certain thing, they loose their ability to use other resources to fill their needs. Perhaps if the people on Easter Island would have realized that they were over using trees for their needs, they could have come up with other things to use, and they would have survived much longer. All it takes is a solution that will work to prevent a society from collapsing, and because these people were unable to find other resources, they failed. If these people could have had an area where they could grow trees, and replace the ones that they were cutting down, that would have also helped them too, but because these people did not realize that because that last tree was actually the last tree, they were unable to prevent their society from failing.
ReplyDeleteDiamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005. Print.
Deforestation has been a major form of ECOcide for many societies. It can contribute to higher temperatures in streams, quicker melting of snow increasing sediment runoff, and loss of main natural resources. These consequences can lead to greater issues like soil erosion, decrease in water quality and decrease in animal reproduction. Large masses of trees provide shading and a cooler atmosphere that is needed in certain areas. In the case of Montana, their trees shaded streams so when they were cut down the water temperatures increased making it difficult for fish to spawn there anymore. On Easter Island, trees were a main natural resource for the islanders. Due to exploitation of these trees, the people ran out of an important natural resource. They lost their main fuel for keeping warm in the winter, and their most important tool. Without the wood, they were unable to build houses and canoes, which led to overexploitation of certain animals that were more easily obtained. Not only has deforestation played its own part in the collapse of a societies environment, it does well to contribute to the other 7 forms of ECOcide.
ReplyDeleteDiamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005.
One of the eight forms of ecocide that Diamond discusses about in past failed societies is human population growth. This has especially been a problem in China, the world’s most populous country. The economy is already huge and is growing at an extremely fast rate, which also means that it has the world’s highest production and consumption of coal, fertilizers, tobacco and timber. This has caused environmental problems ranging from biodiversity loss to trash accumulation and water pollution. Because china has exchange with other countries, and because we share the same planets, ocean and atmosphere, the rest of the world is also affected. High human population also means an increase in total human impact. For China, the food industry changed from pork being the main product, to an increase in the demand for beef, lamb and chicken products. The transportation network has grown explosively including the legnth of railroads, motor roads and airline routes, and the motor vehicle production. The scale and growth of China’s economy is based on outdated and inefficient technology. The increasing human population has led to most of these problems, because the demand for products are the root of all the production which has caused these problems.
ReplyDeleteDiamond, Jared. Penguin books, Collapse. 2005
Air pollution is a huge problem that has been slowly realized over the past decade. Not only is it terrible if a city has an air pollution problem (think clam baking a small room), it lingers in the air and creates second hand smoking conditions, allowing the public to breath in toxins that are in the air. Causing an unhealthy environment for all occupants within range. That goes for people, who then give birth to sickly children; farm animals, which then give polluted meat to eat; even plants are affected and pesticides are a terrible thing to ingest. Not only is this bad for living things, but the pollution gets trapped by our ozone, polluting then the soil and water. And eating away at the ozone causing terrible things like global warming and basically means we are deteriorating the most natural processes of our planet’s normal seasonal cycles.
ReplyDelete-Kristin Adamczyk
Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005.
Human impact is a prevailing issue determining collapse in the past societies and in our present society. Humans tend to exploit the resources around them and leave a lasting impact. The human agricultural impact of wheat production can be seen in Montana and Australia through salinization.
ReplyDeleteIn Montanta, clearing the land for the wheat crop removed the vegetation that previouslt soaked up the rain fall. When the land was cleared and left vacant (fallow) the water seeped below the root level and began dissolving the salt. The increased salt levels in the soil made it harder for crops to absorb water into their roots (Diamond 47). Farmers combated salinization bysowing salt tolerant crops, decreasing fallow time, and planting water demanding crops (Diamond 49).
In Australia, salinization is also a major obstacle. The cause is of the salt levels are partly from the ocean winds sweeping it inland and due to drained and evaporated lakes. The persistence of crop production in unproductive soil has lead modern farmers to put all the nutrients back in with chemical fertilizer (Diamond 381).
Australia’s response to their human impact will lead to collapse sooner than Montana’s.
Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2005.
Brought up by Diamond and discussed in lecture and discussion, one of the eight forms of ECOcide, deforestation has a large impact in the fall of a society. The greatest example of this is Easter Island. They were not too smart in their efforts to conserve their resources, and being an island there were not to many resources to choose from. Trees are an necessity to an Island culture. Boats from fishing and trade were made from the wood, shelters were built and dried wood is the easy thing to burn for cooking. Once the last tree was cut down the end of their society was near. The soil was to thin to sustainably grow new trees leaving the population to parish. Besides the obvious deforestation, this is a lesson in conserving resources. Today, oil is being sucked out of the ground at a rate far beyond new oil found and new oil produced. If we keep this up we will be out of oil in the next couple decades. Hopefully by then we will relieve our dependency on oil and not collapse as a society.
ReplyDelete