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Page 2 of 4 The simplest example of an environmental disaster is Easter Island. An isolated scrap of grassland about 2,000 miles off the coast of Chile, it was the easternmost outpost of Polynesia. Today, it's a barren island without native trees, known primarily for its gigantic stone statues. The native people had developed the sophistication to carve their 80-ton monoliths with stone tools and transport them miles down a mountain to erect them on platforms. But when Europeans arrived in 1722, the native society was in a state of collapse. The residents were even pulling down their own statues. The mysteries surrounding how this society evolved and why it collapsed have recently been solved. According to Diamond, when Polynesians arrived around the year A.D. 400 the island supported a subtropical forest and the world's biggest palm tree variety. Once settled, the Easter Islanders began chopping down the trees for agriculture, canoes, fuel, and monuments. The inhabitants carried on this deforestation for hundreds of years. Then one day, they chopped down the last palm tree. Without trees, the soil eroded, agriculture declined, and canoes disappeared. The people stopped erecting statues. The island was transformed from a traditional Polynesian society to one dominated by military cliques. Ultimately, cannibalism ensued, because there was only one source of protein left on the island: humans. What went wrong on Easter Island seems obvious to us today. But Diamond maintains that future generations will similarly shake their heads at us and at our laws and policies if we continue to make a mess of things. He predicted that a hundred years from now, people might ask, "How on earth did those Americans and Europeans not see the obvious environmental things going on?" Why Some Societies Survive Diamond cited two reasons why some societies survive longer than others do. The first is the lucky absence of bad advice. "Today, Western experts frequently go out to dry areas of Africa and Asia and tell the nomads to settle down. In about 10 or 20 years, the result is disaster, because settling down makes sense in Europe or the United States, but it doesn't make sense in a relatively dry area. Nomadism is a response that's evolved over thousands of years to avoid these problems." The second reason for a society's longevity is the fairness of its laws and policies, specifically those that can reconcile clashes of interest. Diamond categorized disputes into three types: those between the powerful elite and the rest of society, those between regions, and those between generations. Clashes between the elite and the rest of society can be seen in the United States today, especially if the policy of the current administration is to insulate members of the elite from the consequences of their actions, said 9/ 16/02