"In fact, one of the main lesson to be learned from the collapses of the Maya, Anasazi, Easter Islanders, and those other past societies (as well as from the recent collapse of the Soviet Union) is that a society's steep decline may begin only a decade or two after the society reaches its peak numbers, wealth, and power. [...] The reason is simple: maximum population, wealth, resource consumption, and waste production mean maximum environmental impact, approaching the limit where impact outstrips resources. On reflection, it's no surprise that declines of societies tend to follow swiftly on their peaks."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Pulitzer Prize winnersAcademics from the United StatesNon-fiction authors from the United StatesScience authors from the United StatesBiologists from the United States
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter "The world as a polder: what does it all mean to us today?", section "One-liner objections" (Penguin Books, 2011, page 509, .
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Jared Diamond
36 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Jared Diamond →
Related Quotes
"We have already discovered two species that are very intelligent but technically less advanced than us — the common c…"
"Just as strawberries are adapted to birds, so acorns are adapted to squirrels, mangos to bats, and some sedges to ant…"
"White blood cells and other cells of ours actively seek out and kill foreign microbes. The specific antibodies that w…"
"Technological advances seem to come disproportionately from a few very rare geniuses, such as Johannes Gutenberg, Jam…"
"The infectious diseases that regularly visited crowded Eurasian societies, and to which many Eurasians consequently d…"
"Compressing 13,000 years of history on all continents into a 400-page book works out to an average of about one page …"
"The details of which candidate said what during a single televised debate in October 1960 could have given the electo…"
"How can we explain simultaneously this general pattern of female parental care and also its numerous exceptions? The …"
"In particular, while natural selection favors both males and females that leave many offspring, the best strategy for…"
"Put another way, the chimpanzees' closest relative is not the gorilla but humans."