Easter's End - Jared Diamon

          The general argument/point made by Jared Diamond is his work Easter’s End is that a perfectly healthy environment can be destroyed by overconsumption of resources and that if we (America) are not careful and make smarter decisions we will be destroyed just like the Polynesian community of Easter Island. More specifically, Diamond argues/suggests that we are destroying ourselves by overconsumption of all our resources. He writes, “Eventually Easters growing population was cutting the forest more rapidly than the forest was regenerating.”    (pg. 430) In this passage, Diamond is suggesting that the depletion of Easter Island’s resources was a slow process that gradually became worse with the growing population. It snuck up on them and then by time they realized it, it was too late, they had consumed too much and died because of it. In conclusion, it is Diamond’s belief that we are on a downhill spiral to destroying our own community by naively over consuming all of our own resources, just like the Polynesians on Easter Island did.

            In my view, Diamond is right because think about our gas prices, our weather, and our garbage problems; each year they keep getting worse because we are not making changes to live more proficiently and less wastefully. For example, three years ago when my brother started driving he could fill up the car that I drive now with gas for $35.00 dollars. It takes me a little more than $45.00 to completely fill the same tank now. Although Diamond might object me saying that I think it’s too late to change and save our earth, I maintain that unless everyone in the world were forced to make huge decreases in their resource use it is too late for any individual or small group to make a difference; our earth is doomed because of the way we choose to live and because of our stubbornness to change. Therefore, I conclude that Diamond is right in believing that our overconsumption of our resources is going to gradually and slowly destroy us.