The article from Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond discusses the processes and factors that contribute to the survival or death of civilizations. Past civilizations have collapsed from the misuse and destruction of their environment and resources. These collapses usually follow the same pattern of events. An increase in population creates demand for more food and resources. This leads to adoption of environmentally damaging, "unsustainable" agricultural methods which in turn leads to dramatic decrease in population. He then explains how modern societies have attributes that in someways lower the chance of a collapse and in other ways raise the chance of a collapse. He also states that environmental damage is never the sole reason for a collapse. If we do not learn from the mistakes of past civilizations Diamond thinks we may face the same fate. "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."(George Santayna)
Jared Diamond. Collapse: How Societies Choose to fail or Succeed. Viking Penguin, 2005
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