OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot

Homepage of the book.

Essay about the book.

The biologist Jared Diamond published in 2005 the book Collapse: How societies choose to fail or survive. He summarizes how native populations and cultures that have ‘advanced’ in technology, have, without exception, expanded above carrying boundaries, destroying their own foundation for life. And then they collapsed. There are no historical examples of native populations who cared about anything else than short sighted gain. Human cultures have in the past only been restricted by technological limitations in using up resources, not by their nobility. There is a clear boundary between those cultures who remained at a hunter/gatherer level, in which some still exist, and cultures which developed technology or grew their populations to change the ecosystems they depended upon. All the latter-mentioned cultures are gone, except for the one we live in today. The world’s earlier cultures, like ours today, are a history of how people used all available means to fight for, exploit and deplete the ecosystems they lived in. Regardless of culture, people of all eras struggled and fought for food, place, benefits and values that are connected to the two powers of selection: To get what’s needed to secure nurturing for children and family (natural selection), and to become an attractive partner (sexual selection).  — Det Biologiske Mennesket, by Terje Bongard and Eivin Røskaft, page 239

We are simply repeating the failure of all former civilizations. The main difference is that this time the failure is global. After the rejection of MEDOSS, we have no other choice than collapse.

It will probably neither be a fractal collapse, which was the standard before. According to Gail Tverberg it's more likely it will become like an implosion of Leonardo Sticks.