Jared Diamond <sigh>. To paraphrase something once said about Margaret Murray, as an Anthropologist, Diamond is an excellent geographer. The best work I have seen on societal collapse was by Joseph Tainter, and archaeologist. Despite all of he praise heaped on Diamond, I find that he reminds me a lot of the geographical determinists of the 1860's.
Do civilizations collapse, sometimes because of self-induced ecological catastrophes? Of course they do - the Mayan city states and Easter Island are excellent examples. But the radical climate change crowd neglects to point out that global warming started before the industrial revolution, which is the prime agent of evil in their little morality play.
Selil, you are quite correct that "denying the issues don't make them go away". Still and all, while we are undoubtedly in the midst of a fairly radical climate change, although nowhere near as dramatic as the one 12,000 years ago, it is the extrapolations made by the Earth Firsters and other blithering idiots that this is all the fault of the greedy capitalists and the only solution is a "return to nature" (without mentioning the 99% population kill off that would entail) that seem to be dominating the discourse.
Marc
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