BOOKS : Collapse by Jarred Diamond

This is the latest book about how fucked the world is, from a sort of environmental economics point of view. The basic structure is to analyse how and why past civilizations have collapsed, and then compare that to the modern world and try to learn from those collapses.
The book starts with my favorite poem ever; Ozymandias. Which is a theme at the moment, what with me visiting the Ramasseum whcih inspired the poem.
A quick summary

1. Montana, author's favorite state. No snow. lots of mining. pretty fucked.
2. Easter Island. Chopped down trees. It's fucked. We're fucked.
3. Pitcairn and Henderson islands. Relied upon a strong trading partner which collapsed, then they were fucked.
4. Anasazi. somehow survived in the desert, didn't notice subtle changes (largely self-wrought) that meant they were fucked.
5. Maya. Complex example largely brought about by self-induced droughts and over population. Basically they were fucked. As are we
6. Vikings expansion toward america
7. Vikings in greenland
8. Vikings not in greenland, survived 400 years, then they were fucked. But the Inuit survived very nicely thank you. maybe there's some hope? Nah, we're fucked.
9. Some places that made it; japan and it's 70% forest coverage (with a 130 million person population!), Pupua New Guinea, Tikopia (a tiny pacific island which gave up their prize pigs because they were too damaging.)
10. Rawanda's Genocide. Mainly from over-population, evidence being the 5% death toll in _entirely_ hutu provinces - sons killing fathers 'cos they know they can get away with it, and want more than the 1/4 acre to raise their entire family on.
11. Dominican REpublic vs Haiti - border between these two countries is forest on DR side, desert on Haiti, purely by human 'design'. Basically ER is pretty fucked, but Haiti is as fucked as you can be.
12. China doing some things right, but largely fucked (environmentally etc - fish collapse, water pollution etc)
13. Mining Australia. Proposes that we not only mine iron, but also the raw materials that plants require because we don't put them back inthe soil and there is no natural process (like volcanism) to do it for us. Basically we're fucked.
    Then the analysis of the analysis starts.
14. Why do we make bad descisions; prisoner's dilemma, tragedy of the commons. We're fucked.
15. Big business and the environment. Points out some businesses that aren't so bad, lots that are. They're mainly pretty fucked though, especially fisheris and solid mines (gold etc)
16. Polder (dutch term for fucked if the water rises). Talks about what we can do and how 'optimistic' Jarred is that we can. But really, the timeframe he's talking, we're all fucked

So if you would believe him you'd have to say we have more than just peak oil to worry about, and certainly 25 years seems to be a 'mean' time to failure of the 12 or so critical systems he talks about. But maybe it's not that bad? I think I'll go stick my head in the sand.

Golden Bay (NZ) here I come!