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So says Jared Diamond. But the University of California at Los Angeles professor of geography and Pulitzer Prize winner noted the world can learn from past mistakes and resolve environmental issues before they become unmanageable.
Diamond’s keynote address, “Why the World Runs on Water,” was heard by at least 200 people Sunday night at the La Crosse Center.
His speech kicked off the International Conference on Rivers and Civilization, which runs through Wednesday and is sponsored by the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa, and several other organizations.
It is the third in a series of world conferences on rivers, following a 2002 conference along the Volga River in Russia and another in 2003 along the Nile River in Egypt.
Diamond said he examined the collapse of civilizations in his most recent book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,” because it was the “most fascinating and important question I could find to write about.”
He focused on the former Polynesian society of Easter Island during much of his hour-long speech. The isolated 64 square miles of land in the Pacific Ocean had hundreds of massive stone statues that were built — and toppled — by the inhabitants of the island. Explorers who found the island in the 1700s couldn’t understand how the statues were moved around.
Archeologists and historians determined the island was once rich with lush vegetation, Diamond said. But sometime in the 1680s, the last tree was chopped down and inhabitants ran out of fuel for their fires, wood for their boats and material to make ropes, which were used to haul the huge statutes.
With no way to communicate, Diamond and others hypothesize civil war broke out among the 12 clans on the island, and as resources dwindled, they turned to cannibalism.
Examples like that can help the world deal with today’s environmental issues, Diamond said as he turned to global warming. The idea the Earth is gradually warming started about 30 years ago, and the problem has yet to be solved, he said.
Three things have shaped the response to the issue:
n It’s been hard to anticipate how an unprecedented event would develop.
n Because global warming has caused temperatures to fluctuate unpredictably, it’s hard to perceive.
n And some countries refuse to recognize the problem, he added. Diamond worries that the ability for the elite, the rich and politicians to isolate themselves from disasters like hurricanes means they don’t feel motivated to take care of the problems that arise.
Many environmental problems cost a lot of money to fix, are hard to solve and the solutions are seen as luxuries, Diamond said. He noted that if a few hundred million dollars were spent last year to fix the leaky levees in New Orleans, the tragedies brought by hurricanes Katrina and Rita might not have occurred to the extent they did.
But hope exists, Diamond said. Modern communication allows us to learn what’s happening in other parts of the world and take action. And what archeologists and historians tell us about the past can teach us not to make the same mistakes twice.
On the Web
The International Conference on Rivers and Civilization is open to the public Tuesday afternoon, when residents are invited to attend sessions at the La Crosse Center. For more information, visit www.Rivers2006.org.
Kate Schott can be reached at Kate.Schott@lacrossetribune.com or (608) 791-8226.
