Geography CORE 2401
University of Denver The Human Population
Dr. Sutton
Collapse Discussion Points – Part I
Use a world (or other) outline map(s) to find and mark the locations mentioned; label from atlas references and text commentary to develop a personal “concordance” to Collapse. Continue for each discussion guide. You may also find it useful to compile a vocabulary list of unfamiliar words and terms.
Prologue
1. How does Diamond define “collapse”? How does this differ, for population groups, from “decline”? How does Diamond define “ecocide”? What activities and processes contribute to it? At what scale (global, continental, regional, local) does this occur? [3-7]
2. What four new environmental problems may be added to the eight traditional processes undermining past societies? How are such threats likely to affect industrial societies, should no solutions be found? In what ways does Diamond suggest our societies face lower risk than past societies? … higher risk? Why do we resist the notion that we contributed to our own decline? What logical error is involved here? What is the real problem? What are Diamond’s “controversy and four complications?” [7-8]
3. How is moral responsibility for environmental insult different for past societies than for our 21st Century societies? [8-10]
4. What factors of climate change does Diamond offer to partially explain societal change? What are the polar opposite positions characterizing debate on the issue of present-day environmental impacts of human groups? [10-15]
5. What advocacy for science does Diamond promote? [15-17]
6. Diamond reiterates the items of his five-point framework for comparative analysis. What are they, and what was the essential difference between the two population groups in Greenland? [21]
7. What reason(s) does Diamond offer for having written this book? [23]
Chapter 1
1. What environmental problems does Diamond mention as “plaguing” the United States? What is the comparative disadvantage for Montana of its agriculture economy? [30-33]
2. What changes have occurred in Montana’s economic bases and strategies? What are these like in our own times? What economic disparities characterize present-day Rivalli County? [33-35]
3. How beneficial was metals mining in Montana in the long run? Which imperatives of capitalist business apply to mining? What is the legacy of mining gold in Montana for the 21st Century? [35-41]
4. Which demographic trends promote logging? What are the unintended outcomes of the process of extracting resources for lumber and paper pulp? Citizen activism can change land uses. How does Diamond suggest this happens? What factors influence logging in Montana? Evaluate the fire ecology of the western landscape, considering both natural and built environments. What role do our society’s policy decisions play? How can more trees be bad? Does “multiple use” (a legal imperative) promote bad management? What is “instinctive” about the public distaste for a “let it burn” policy? [41-47]
5. How has Montana’s soils environment been affected and changed by human exploitation? Are local and extra-local perspectives different? How? Does the Powder River rise in Montana or in Wyoming? How is coal-bed methane extraction a transboundary issue for the coming decade(s)? [47-49]
6. Evaluate Montana’s water supply and use environment. Consider climate, climate change, technology, competition, population increase, drought, land use, and litigation. By what means can we resolve these conflicting interests? How are water rights managed in the West? [49-53]
7. Consider the competitive exclusion (a principle of ecology) of native plants by invasive exotic species. How is responsibility for this shared among the human population? [53-56]
8. How is Montana’s wealth distributed? How does the economy function and what has changed in recent years? How have social pressures changed? Who benefits? Who disbenefits? How do subsistence pursuits differ from commercial ones? [56-63]
9. What is government for? What is the rural-urban dichotomy? What are the priorities of Montanans? … of newcomers? How is land use managed? [63-65]
10. What perspectives do local people offer? [66-75]
Chapter 2
1. What does Diamond suggest about human settlement of Polynesia? What evidence does he offer to support his thesis? [87-88]
2. What subsistence strategies prevailed on Easter Island? How large a population was supported? How are such estimates made? How does a “stone mulch” work? [90-93]
3. How were Easter Island’s natural resources distributed and managed? What about trade? … transportation? What influence did terrain have? [94-95]
4. What evidence does Diamond suggest supports the hypothesis that Easter Island previously possessed a very diverse biota? [102-104]
5. What foodstuffs were available to early Easter Islanders, according to Diamond? What happened to that food supply? [104-107]
6. How did Easter Island’s people deplete their energy source? What other resources disappeared? What social changes happened after 1680? What political and religious outcomes does Diamond report? [107-111]
7. How did Easter Islanders respond to contact with colonizing Europeans? Why are writing systems necessary in societies? What alternative explanations does Diamond offer for the outcomes? [111-114]
8. How was the extent of pre-European deforestation estimated? What is the Andesite Line? (Estimate the position of this line and draw it on your journal map.) What relation does this have to the tectonic/geological activity of Earth? What is Central Asia’s dust plume? What does this dust provide? What are the key geographic variables? What great misfortune underlay Easter Island’s collapse? [115-118]
9. How is the modern world reflected in this case study? [118-119]
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