Easter Island : A Case Study in the Response to Resource Depletion

[profgoose]

This is a case study in which you are invited to answer the question, “What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?”

For a several years, I have been intrigued by this question which Jared Diamond asks us to consider in his book ‘Collapse’.

In fact, the question can be asked more broadly: “What were the thought processes and discussions amongst the inhabitants of Easter Island leading up to the removal of the last remnants of forest?” This could be seen, perhaps, as a hypothetical exploration, rooted in a real historical event, of “the psychology of resource depletion denial.”

I can’t help feeling that this is highly relevant to us today where the world seems shrunk to the size of a small island in the vast ocean of space. How could the islanders so knowingly have destroyed the life-blood of their island and their own future? How do you imagine the Easter Islanders behaved in those last few years before the last tree was felled?

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6333

[Bolo Boffin]

1. Related --

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=240132&mesg_id=240132

[Cassandra]

2. One thing Diamond points out...

is that the trees, once the largest palms in the world and slow growing in that environment, became much smaller vegetation and not so distinguishable as trees. Once they had cut down the mature trees, they were cutting younger and younger ones. It's hard to recognize the last seedling as the last tree.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. Clive Ponting

http://www.primitivism.com/easter-island.htm

[phantom power]

4. Bigger stone hea--

oh, never mind.