Al: Diamond’s point is, indeed, that the best approximation to a Singularity we know of is a downfall. He identifies dozens of examples in history and pre-history, from Petra to Yucatan to Easter Island, of exponential development causing collapse. The singular difference between the modern case and his examples that is a cause for hope is that we know the previous examples, and can quantify the process. That knowledge, thus far, is having little effect.
On the flip side, all the previous collapses were local; the Easter Islanders cut down all their own trees, but not everyone else’s besides.
Some of Diamond’s examples are of collapses consciously averted. New Guinea highlanders evidently noticed, 6000 years after they began doing intensive agriculture, that they were about to eliminate crucial tree species, and instituted woodlots. The Japanese Shogunate did the same a few centuries later. The Shogunate had the authority to enforce its strictures. On New Guinea, perhaps tribes that kept woodlots were able to defeat neighboring tribes that didn’t. Neither scenario suggests a method to address modern global crises.
Al: Diamond’s point is, indeed, that the best approximation to a Singularity we know of is a downfall. He identifies dozens of examples in history and pre-history, from Petra to Yucatan to Easter Island, of exponential development causing collapse. The singular difference between the modern case and his examples that is a cause for hope is that we know the previous examples, and can quantify the process. That knowledge, thus far, is having little effect.
On the flip side, all the previous collapses were local; the Easter Islanders cut down all their own trees, but not everyone else’s besides.
Some of Diamond’s examples are of collapses consciously averted. New Guinea highlanders evidently noticed, 6000 years after they began doing intensive agriculture, that they were about to eliminate crucial tree species, and instituted woodlots. The Japanese Shogunate did the same a few centuries later. The Shogunate had the authority to enforce its strictures. On New Guinea, perhaps tribes that kept woodlots were able to defeat neighboring tribes that didn’t. Neither scenario suggests a method to address modern global crises.