Collapse Notes

Here are your notes that you created as a class. Click on the question and you will be taken to a page with the outline of the answer. Both sections are listed together for everyone's benefit:

*please note: pages are referenced from Collapse as (Collapse, pg. #).

1. What is the main difference between the 'Huls Farm' and the 'Gardar Farm?'
2. In your own words define what Jared Diamond means by collapse.
3. Diamond describes ecological suicide--ecocide--as "people inadvertently destroying their environmental resources on which their societies depend" (Collapse, 7). What are the eight ways human societies tend to commit ecocide?
4. Why is it important to study past cases of ecocide?
5. How is our present day society at lower risk of collapse than past societies?
6. How is our present day society at higher risk of collapse than past societies?
7. Environmentalist have been accused of a false conception of past indigenous people. That is, some environmentalists believe that indigenous peoples in the past lived in perfect or near perfect harmony with their environment. This is commonly referred to as the 'ecologically noble Indian' hypothesis. Why does Jared Diamond suggest this hypothesis is misleading?
8. Diamond says that the type of science he relied on to write Collapse is the "comparative method" or the "natural experiment" (Collapse, 17). What does this method entail? (hint: comparative suggests he's comparing something. What could that be?). How is this different than the lab-based science we used to conduct our paper airplane experiment?