Collapse: Redux

I posted a brief note about Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed awhile back and finally wrapped this book up a couple days ago. This book presented a really interesting read about a really interesting subject. He layed out examples of past civilizations of varying types...isolated, interdependent, seafaring, farmers...and broke down the various points that brought those societies to total ruin and failure, or allowed them to thrive in the face of adversity. He then discussed parallels and differences between them back then, and us today. To give away the ending, the author does indeed still have hope that humanity won't extinguish itself. After reading his book, he must be one heck of an optimist. The picture painted between the covers is some pretty alarming stuff. Ours is a planet on which our survival requires some strong leadership and some practical decision making. I'll leave it to you whether or not you think we have any shred of that kind of leadership at any level of any of the governments with the clout to make a difference.