Collapse Assignment #1

After reading the chapter on Easter Island from the book "Collapse", I began to think alot about the similarities and more so, the differences between our culture and the culture of the people on Easter Island. Immediately their seemed to be a parallel with our society in terms of how their society collapsed once they used up all of their natural resources. The parallel of course was with the trees of Easter Island, and the Fossil Fuels used in America today. The basic idea here I think is the idea of luxury vs. commodity. I think that the problem with this comparison for the most part is that the people of Easter island used all of their trees as a way to transport their massive stone statues from the inland to the beach (a luxury), while we use fossil fuels as a way to power our vehicles, machines, homes, heat, and just about everything else (a commodity).

Looking back at the repercussions of using those trees for transporting statues to the other side of the island, it is clear that they could not last as a society after they had drained the land of the resource that they needed the most to survive. Had they used those trees to make boats that could be used to retrieve food from other islands, or build homes, they could have made much better use of their limited resources than they did.

Today, we are draining the world of fossil fuels and have since reached our peak level of oil (2006) meaning all that can happen now is we use up what little we have left until we adopt a new form of power before we end up like the Easter island residents with no resources left. This is basically the main idea of collapse, we use up what resources we have, and than are left with nothing. The only answer to avoid collapse seems to be to find an alternative, and until we do, it seems to me that the reality of the Easter island collapse isn't to far off for ourselves.