Years ago I read Collapse by Jared Diamond of Guns Germs and Steel fame. I don’t remember a lot of the specifics, but he was exploring the collapse of civilizations like the one on Easter Island to draw parallels with the probable coming collapse of our global civilization for environmental reasons.

One thing that stuck with me is how he asked himself what the person on Easter Island must have felt while chopping down the very last tree out of what used to be a forest that sustained life for every animal and human on the island.

What could have been the process that drove people to continue chopping trees down even while they could see with their own eyes how they were hurting themselves?

He went on to outline a series of possible reasons, including particular types of tragedies of the common. (That humans alone destroyed the trees on Easter Island is contentious, but that’s not my point. Many similar examples exist that are less debatable.)

Today, I can see many of those same sorts of behaviors manifest in people who deny anthropomorphic climate change or who disclaim responsibility for it.

Too many of the people with the power to do something about climate change are too invested in short-term personal profit, or too afraid of being the only people to wake up and thus lose out to their competitors.

Tragedy indeed, but what to do about it in a civilization designed for profit? Nobody has figured the answer out yet. I wonder what my descendants will be thinking 50 years from now as they figuratively chop down that last tree.