Societal Collapse: Climate, Environment, and Civilization

Introduction: Environment, Climate, and Societal Collapse

Environmental determinism has long been out of favor among historians and social scientists, although well into the nineteenth century even the majority of Westerners were highly dependent on the climate and environment for their survival. Since the entire world economy was based on agriculture, a shortfall in harvests meant famines, epidemics, and death for those who were at or below subsistence level. Such famines were a primary cause for the overthrow of the monarchy in France in 1789, and they led to rebellions, riots, and instability wherever they occurred. As late as the 1840s in Ireland, the great potato blight led to the death or emigration of half the population and the near-destruction of Irish society.

In the cases of Easter Island, Norse Greenland, and Classic Maya civilization, climate change combined with deforestation and agricultural practices that destroyed the environment led to the total collapse of these societies. These examples should serve as object lessons for the depletion of natural resources and environmental destruction taking place today, when human technology is far more advanced than anyone in the past could have imagined and its impact on the global climate and environment is infinitely greater.

Climate History and the Interglacial Context

Historically speaking, the present industrial civilization is a phenomenon situated in a relatively warm period between ice ages. In the last ice age, atmospheric carbon was at a low of 180 parts per million, which had risen to 260 parts per million by its end.¹ All the early agricultural civilizations in the Nile valley, China, India, and Mesopotamia came into existence after the ice retreated approximately 12,000 years ago, and all depended on irrigation for their survival. Some periods of this interglacial age have been warmer than others, such as the Medieval Warm Period of 900–1200, or the present period of global warming caused by deforestation and the burning of fossil fuels.

In contrast, during the Little Ice Age of 1300–1850, glaciers moved further south than at any point in the previous 12,000 years, and only began to retreat in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This climate shift destroyed the Norse colony in Greenland, while "colder and wetter weather and malnutrition from low crop yields made humans more susceptible to diseases from flu to malaria."² Unlike the Norse, however, most Europeans adapted to this colder climate by building stronger vessels capable of sailing far out into the Atlantic during storms, and by developing new, more intensive agricultural techniques in Britain and the Low Countries that "offered effective protection against the famines of earlier times."³

As European farming methods spread throughout the world over the last two hundred years, deforestation contributed to global warming and the increase of carbon in the atmosphere — effects that were unknown when modern industry and agriculture were first developed. As Easter Island, the Greenland Norse, and the Classic Maya also demonstrate, human activities have always affected the climate and environment at least as much as solar activity, volcanic eruptions, and other natural phenomena. Civilizations that fail to understand and adapt to their environments are ultimately doomed to extinction.

Easter Island: Deforestation and Environmental Degradation

Easter Island is a microcosm of environmental degradation and the misuse of natural resources sufficient to destroy a society. Deforestation and the clearing of soil for agriculture led to severe erosion between approximately 1200 and 1650, and "Easter Island's society failed soon after its topsoil disappeared."⁴ Storms gradually stripped the island of its topsoil, bird species became extinct, and agriculture had largely disappeared by 1500. After nearly all bird species ceased to exist, the guano that had once fertilized the soil vanished as well. These combined factors led to devastating population loss, the collapse of central government, and chaotic warfare between clans that left Easter Island in a state of anarchy.

At one time, Easter Island's population may have reached 7,000 or even as many as 25,000 people, but it had fallen to approximately 2,000 by the time Europeans made first contact in 1722. At that point, visitors found "not a single tree or bush over ten feet tall" on the island and could not comprehend how the islanders had constructed the great stone Moai, some of which weighed between 100 and 200 tons.⁵ In earlier times, from roughly 900 to 1300, the islanders were able to fish offshore, and at least one-third of their diet came from porpoises. Their diet was supplemented by the twenty-five bird species that once lived on the island — including petrels, terns, parrots, owls, and albatrosses — but by 1500 both the trees and the birds were gone.⁶

Since no wood remained, the islanders lost the capacity to construct oceangoing boats and were forced to use grass and turf for fuel, which further accelerated erosion. Unable to build boats, they could no longer supplement their diet with fish. In short, the total collapse of their society into warfare and chaos, accompanied by widespread poverty and hunger, bears more than a passing resemblance to conditions in much of the present-day world. If social, economic, and environmental policies do not change, the fate of the entire planet could closely mirror that of Easter Island.

Conclusion: Lessons for Modern Civilization

If modern industrial civilization is not to suffer the same fate as Greenland, Easter Island, and the Maya, then it must have new leadership that understands the dangers of climate change, depletion of natural resources, and environmental destruction. In all three historical examples, the ruling elites could hardly have comprehended what was happening to their societies or why, and continued to follow the same policies until their societies completely collapsed into chaos, civil conflict, and radical depopulation.