What Diamond is saying is that it is possible that the big cities of today such as those in New York will one day be ancient sites that people visit for entertainment just as today people visit Mayan cities which once were the greatest cities of their time but are now ruins. Diamond suggests that the reason so many great civilizations have fallen is that its citizens depleted their land's resources.
Photo by www.comicvine.com
"The fifth set of factors--the society's responses to its environmental problems--always proves significant." (Diamond 27)
Here Diamond talks about how there can be many factors providing a society's collapse, but only one is meaningful every time: "the society's responses to its environmental problems". (Diamond 27) For example, Norwegians who moved to Iceland thought the land there, was the same as the land they owned in Norway. However, the land turned out to be very different and they ended up destroying much of its topsoil and forests. They later responded to the trouble they had created by taking on stronger ways of protecting the environment and are now among the highest on national average per-capita income in the world. How about that for responding to environmental problems!
This is a picture of a place in Iceland!
Photo by www.sceneriies.com
"Hence the risk arises that, if your trade partner becomes weakened for any reason (including environmental damage) and can no longer supply the essential import or the cultural tie, your own society may become weakened as a result." (Diamond 31)
Often a society will have a neighboring or distant society that provides for it in such ways as selling products produced in that society. This can be of great help but also risky. The reason it can be risky is that if the helpful society is weakened, the same can happen to the society that receives from it.
"I'm more interested in environmental issues because of what I see as their consequences for people than because of their consequences for birds." (Diamond 33)
Diamond has been accused of valuing nature over people. However, even though he admits he is very involved with nature and does things such as bird watching, he values the results of what is done to the environment more because of what it does for people than for what it does for the animals that live in it such as birds.
Photo by crossed-flag-pins.com
Diamond has been accused of valuing nature over people. However, even though he admits he is very involved with nature and does things such as bird watching, he values the results of what is done to the environment more because of what it does for people than for what it does for the animals that live in it such as birds.
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