Getting to One-Planet Living

Abstract

In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond asks the obvious question of a forest-dependent society: “What was the Easter Islander who cut down the last tree thinking?” For those familiar with the human tendency to habituate to virtually any conditions, the answer might very well be “nothing much.” The individual who cut down Easter Island’s last significant tree probably did not noticeably alter a familiar landscape. True, that person was likely standing in a scrubby woodland with vastly diminished biodiversity compared with the dense forest of earlier generations. Nevertheless, the incremental encroachments that eventually precipitated the collapse of Easter Island society were likely insufficient in the course of any one islander’s life to raise general alarm. Some of the tribal elders might have worried about the shrinking forest, but there is no evidence that they did—or could have done—much to reverse the inexorable decline of the island’s ecosystem.¹