The Easter Island effect

[OffWithTheirHeads]

As I understand it, anthropologists think that the residents of Easter Island, either from not understanding the necessity of husbanding their natural resources or from just plain greed, used up everything on the Island that sustained their life and they all died off.

Today, I heard a report on NPR that just stunned me. Apparently, climatologists predict that this summer, for the first time in recorded history, the North pole will be without ice. Common sense tells us that this should be a BIG, HUGE, WARNING FROM MOTHER NATURE! DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON! YOU ARE FUCKING UP THE PLANET IRREPARABLY! The effects on our little blue dot, spaceship Earth, our tiny island in the Milky way galaxy from the continued pressures of overpopulation and limitless greed and over consumption of our planets natural resources should be obvious to everybody and the final result should be apparent to all. The end of civilization as we know it.

So what are are world leaders and corporate masters doing about it? THEY ARE GLEEFULLY ANTICIPATING THE UNPRECEDENTED OPPORTUNITY TO GET UP THERE AND DRILL AND PLUNDER THE NATURAL RESOURCES THAT WILL BE MADE ACCESSIBLE BY THE ICE MELT!

God help us all.

[Atman]

1. Maybe if we build some statues...

:shrug:

It's pretty fucking crazy, no? I think it stems from a defeatist attitude; it will take eons to reverse the damage we've done, so why not just go for it now while we, the still living, can benefit from it? Fuck our kids and grandkids. There's profits to be made!

.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

5. I saw this comming when I was in my teens and decided not

to have children. Now, at 57, I fear what the next 30 +- years I have remaining are going to look like. I feel especially sorry for my wife's grand kids. I just don't see the leadership or the enlightenment of the global population to turn this around.

[ColbertWatcher]

2. That was Jared Diamond.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/042.html

[OffWithTheirHeads]

3. Well, I certainly wasn't as eloquent

but I arrived at the same conclusion.

[ColbertWatcher]

11. He wrote a whole book on societies failing...

...it's called http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Collapse/Jared-Diamond/e/9780143036555/?itm=5">Collapse

[The Traveler]

4. I am 40 pages into Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine"

and already I've had to step out to the garage to smack the punching bag a few times, just to release the anger. I already knew many pieces of the puzzle, but Klein adds a few more and snaps them together. The picture yielded is far from pretty.

I am convinced the corporatists know full well the climate change hurtling towards us brings disaster ... and with the guidance of the ghost of Milton Friedman they see with disaster further opportunities to replace social structure with the engines of profit. Idiots. The disasters produced thereby may well knock down their palaces of paper as well as the houses of common people.

Indeed, God help us all.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

6. I try to avoid books like this because I am already too angry

I was angry when "The population bomb" was released in 1968. That's a lot of years of anger. However, the more I hear about Naomi, the more I think I need to read this.

[The Traveler]

7. I had resolved some time ago

to read it. It has been discussed so much around here ... but that is not the same as reading her argument through. 40 pages and I really had to hit the bag. I am determined to finish reading it. I remember the "Population Bomb" ... I read it sometime in the late sixties. (I was about 13.) It is amazing how accurate the general predictions of that book and the Club of Rome Report have proven to be.

[postulater]

13. My mother gave me A Silent Spring when I was a kid

It was beyond me at the time but I got the basic message. And it stuck with me. I can't even read much about it anymore.

[The Doctor.]

8. They are utter fools.

They really believe that their wealth and power will protect them as they allow, even facilitate, the coming economic and climate chaos.

Such arrogance. The ruling elite, the powerful and super-wealthy never learn. Everytime destruction is wrought upon civilization, who gets dragged into the streets and murdered?

Every. Single. Time.

Sure, some will have enough built up around them to survive, but those with only a few billion in assets will find their riches cannot protect themm from the wrath of the people.

They are so arrogant, because they have forgotten, or perhaps never really understood, that civilization also protects them. So they chip away at the foundations of civilized society in the pursuit of ultimate power, and are surprised to find that they are without the protections of a civilized society.

[The Traveler]

15. True, good Doctor

But not as foolish as the common man who thinks these elites have their interests at heart, or who abandon common sense and place faith in their philosophies.

[The Doctor.]

23. So true, we allow them such arrogance. nt

[csziggy]

21. Guess they never read Poe's "The Masque of the Read Death"

Where the wealthy hide in a castle to protect themselves from the Plague. But Death comes to them, anyway. In the Roger Corman movie version at the end "Prospero attempts to flee through the now-infected crowd, but his red-cloaked self is always in front of him. The Red Death finally corners him, asks him, "Why are you afraid to die, Prospero? Your soul died a long time ago," and strikes him down." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Masque_of_the_Red_Death_(film)) How fitting for many of the wealthy today.

[SammyWinstonJack]

35. Greedy fools who apparently think they are insulated from global disaster.

Or maybe they think will not be here when all hell breaks loose. Either way, they suck.

[Subdivisions]

25. I had to set it down and haven't been able to pick it back up yet. n/t

[XemaSab]

9. Jared Diamond is a dumbass

In "Collapse" he says that the Easter Islanders cut down all their trees in one chapter, but he also says that all the tree seeds were eaten by rats in another chapter. Maybe the Easter Islanders didn't cut down all their trees, but the trees failed to regenerate on their own?

He comes up with some half-assed theory, and cherry-picks anecdotes to fit the theory, ignoring all conflicting data.

[donco6]

10. That's a pretty harsh assessment.

I liked both Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse. I don't find him to be a dumbass.

[XemaSab]

12. I know it's harsh

but I think it's deserved.

A real scholar wouldn't ignore or dismiss contradictory evidence.

Also, Collapse was very badly written. He needs an editor badly.

[Fumesucker]

16. Trees and the seeds of trees are two different things..

The inhabitants of Rapa Nui cut down the trees on their island to make tools for moving and carving the stone statues that are lying all over the place there. That rats also ate the seeds of the trees, making it impossible to grow more trees, has nothing to do with whether or not the actual trees growing in the ground were cut down.

Eventually the islanders got to the point there were no trees left needed to make the canoes for fishing, where a great deal of the protein for human consumption came from. Also, with no trees for canoes it became impossible to leave Rapa Nui and the inhabitants descended to barbarism and cannibalism.

Rapa Nui is indeed a good analogy for our island Earth and a cautionary tale to those who would rape the environment for short term gain.

[XemaSab]

24. All trees have to regenerate, and all trees naturally die.

Even giant redwoods naturally die after a thousand years. Most tropical trees don't even live that long.

How does Diamond know, with no written record, that the trees did not naturally regenerate? :shrug:

[freethought]

19. There was definite evidence

that Easter Island was once covered in trees, a jungle island. Now, there isn't a tree on it. The island looks more like a short grass prairie. The PBS show "NOVA" did a fantastic job on the theories and evidence indicating what possibly could have happened.

The trees were there, there is no doubt about that. The natives cut down the trees for canoes, fuel, building material etc... As the culture thrived, they cut down more trees. The trees simply could not grow fast enough to keep the ecosystem sound. Rats were probably just another part of the problem.

One thing archeologists noted, aside from the large stone figures, was the presence of a symbol carved into the rocks, I tend to remember a bird. It appears everywhere. And one thing they were able to find out was that the bird carvings post-dated(came after) most of the stone figures. It is theorized that a "bird cult" sprung up in the wake of the resource problems that besieged the Island. Those that worshiped the stone figures now had an opposing force to deal with in a "bird cult". Essentially, when the resources became scarce and the competition for what was left became so intense, the people of the Island turned on each other. They don't know how violent things may have become but likely it was not pleasant to put it mildly.

Easter Island should be a monument for what happens when you destroy the systems that sustain you.

[XemaSab]

28. So there were competing theories...

Diamond only has one theory, the theory that fits what he wants.

[freethought]

33. I did not read Diamond's book so

it would not be proper for me to make an opinion on what he said.

Diamond may have a theory that he prefers. From the NOVA episode, the archeologists/scientists were forming their theories on the evidence available and similar patterns that have likely occurred elsewhere.

Ecosystem destruction, dwindling resources, and competition for those remaining resources have tendency to turn ugly. Opposing powers, ideas, and forces clash and in the end there's no winner. Everyone loses.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

20. Who cares how the trees vanished? ?The point is that their

civilization couldn't sustain itself when they did!

[XemaSab]

29. There is a big difference between destroying your own environment

and having your environment collapse around you.

:shrug:

[javadu]

30. These Two Pieces of Evidence Are Actually

supporting JD's theory, suggesting that you are probably the dumbass. It is unlikely that rats were able to eat ALL the tree seeds, until there were very few trees, because they CUT THEM DOWN!! Then, the rats also started starving, ate the few seeds produced by the few trees, and now there are NO TREES. I think you are the dumbass.

[XemaSab]

32. He said in "Collapse"

that EVERY tree seed found had been eaten by rats.

Rats are smart, and YES, they could eat all the tree seeds.

At any rate, it seemed like really flaky scholarship to say one thing in one place and something totally different in another place. :shrug;

[bonito]

14. And Dubai continues to build fantasy islands

Now that! is confusing to say the least, no?

[Spouting Horn]

17. We're all gonna die! n/t

[OffWithTheirHeads]

18. Well of course we are

Should our grand children die as well for our greed?

[Lyric]

22. Um, the Rapanui natives of Easter Island *didn't* all die off.

It came pretty close at one point, with a little over a hundred of them left, but the population has recovered and is now over 3000. Their population loss was due to a clusterfuck of deforestation, invading Peruvian slavers, smallpox and tuberculosis brought by missionaries and explorers, and inter-clan wars between the people themselves. The deforestation alone didn't do it--it didn't even do *most* of it.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

26. cool

please elaborate!

[Lyric]

27. Sure!

Easter Island is one of the youngest inhabited territories on Earth, and for most of its history it was the most isolated inhabited territory on Earth. Its inhabitants the Rapanui have endured famines, epidemics, civil war, slave raids and colonialism; have seen their population crash on more than one occasion, and created a cultural legacy that has brought them fame out of all proportion to their numbers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Easter_Island

[cliffordu]

31. We could all get rid of our cars, heat the minimum living space possible and

recycle everything, don't buy anything new made in China, ride a used bicycle, use a used computer....


Oh, wait:

I ALREADY DO THAT STUFF.


Unless we all really do what we can, we are fucked.

[hatrack]

34. Or, as I stole to post on the Environment board a while back . . .

"When in doubt, build a bigger stone head."

:evilgrin: