Collapse

I arrived at a five-point framework of possible contributing factors that I now consider in trying to understand any putative environmental collapse. Four of those sets of factors— environmental damage, climate change, hostile neighbors, and friendly trade partners

it’s difficult to get people to agree on exercising restraint in harvesting a shared resource

Even today, there is a human tendency to increase production and population during good decades,

recovery from damage),

predict even for a professional ecologist.

settling ponds to contain the toxic wastes.

Any society in turmoil today, no matter how remote—think of Somalia and Afghanistan as examples—can cause trouble for prosperous societies on other continents, and is also subject to their influence

The remainder is waste rock and tailings still containing copper, arsenic, cadmium, and zinc, which are toxic to people (as well as to fish, wildlife, and our livestock) and hence are bad news when they get into groundwater, rivers, and soil.

signs of their incipient depletion become masked by normal fluctuations