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“If I was Japan’s worst enemy trying to figure out a strategy to drive it into a crisis in 10 years’ time, my strategy would be to get the Japanese to do exactly what they are doing, which is to over-harvest their main source of protein.”

“There is a parallel based on the same fundamental mechanisms of the economic collapse that we’re seeing now and the collapse of past civilisations such as the Maya,”

only those societies able to stamp out unsustainable habits – over-logging, overspending, over-extension – have the ability to survive

our early twenty-first century civilization is not the first to face the prospect of environmentally induced economic decline. The question is how we will respond.

Today, our successes and problems flow from the extraordinary growth in the world economy over the last century.

While the economy is growing exponentially, the earth’s natural capacities, such as its ability to supply fresh water, forest products, and seafood, have not increased. Humanity’s collective demands first surpassed the earth’s regenerative capacity around 1980. Today, global demands on natural systems exceed their sustainable yield capacity by nearly 30 percent. We are meeting current demands by consuming the earth’s natural assets, setting the stage for decline and collapse.

these underlying environmental factors that inevitably prompted societal collapse

societal collapse is often avoidable – a message that is painfully pertinent given the ecologically unsustainable nature of many modern societies

there are many reasons why societies make disastrous decisions, including a lack of foresight; poor governance that ensures people can get away with doing things that are in their personal interest but not in the interest of the society; a lack of flexibility that leaves societies that no longer work in a changing environment; and perhaps most importantly a refusal to acknowledge a problem even exists