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Title: A good wake-up call
Review: A very interesting book -- and one that, if people can get past its somewhat daunting length, contains a lot of wisdom. It's easy in this high-tech age to look back at the Maya, the inhabitants of Easter Islands, and other civilizations that have done themselves in through overpopulation and overall ecological misjudgment and say, "That can't happen to us. We'd see it coming and do something about it." In truth, though, I think civilizations all balance on a knife edge, and an ecological catastrophe can push them over that edge -- a drought, an earthquake, land that has been grazed or cultivated to exhaustion. We drive from our climate-controlled homes or offices to the grocery store where an abundance of foods unequaled in history awaits us -- and we don't realize how easily the system could fall apart. "Collapse," while overlong and a bit windy at times, is an important book. Doubtless the Maya thought their civilization was impregnable, too.
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