Learning From the Self-Destructive Disappearance of the Easter Island People - Our Enviroment

Interesting article Kavika.

You would think that modern new age man would have the common sense to figure that out by now. I don't think that society as a whole thinks of preserving the planet but more like getting all I can now because I am only here for 80 years.

Over population will soon reach a point where countries will be protecting their borders and resources with armed troops. It is inevitable, and water will be the first resource for which we will kill our neighbors.

So will intelligence fail the test of evolution?

Is iintelligence actually intelligent?

Interesting article, Kavika

While it is true the people of Easter Island did not take care of their environment by cutting down their beautiful forest, I also read somewhere that it was also due to an animal that would eat all the seeds the trees dropped. It has been a while since I read that, and will need to check it out on the internet which I cannot do right at this moment in time. I am just expressing this for “food for thought”

Very interesting article, Kav. We're very bad at enviromentalism. We're more a blight on the Earth than something that benefits it. I think if we don't change our ways, good old Mother Nature will shake the fleas off her coat.

Thanks for the seed, Kav! We can learn much from the mistakes of the past, if only we can focus on something more than ourselves.

I suspect, though, that the disaster happened not with a bang but with a whimper. Any islander who tried to warn about the dangers of progressive deforestation would have been overridden by vested interests of carvers, bureaucrats, and chiefs, whose jobs depended on continued deforestation.

Our Pacific Northwest loggers are only the latest in a long line of loggers to cry, "Jobs over trees!" The changes in forest cover from year to year would have been hard to detect. Only older people, recollecting their childhoods decades earlier, could have recognized a difference.

Corrective action is blocked by vested interests, by well-intentioned political and business leaders, and by their electorates, all of whom are perfectly correct in not noticing big changes from year to year. Instead, each year there are just somewhat more people, and somewhat fewer resources, on Earth.

I was unable to see where there was any real evidence to support the theories behind the disappearance of the Easter Island folks. Whereas the inhabitants could have done themselves in, it seems just as plausible to me that a giant tsunami or disease could have been the cause of their extinction.

Of couse, I can't prove my theory either.

Good article Kavika, Migwetch gete niijii.

Good thinking article Kavika and I have seen different reasons why the Easter Islanders have disappeared and I tend to side with too much exploitation of the resources, but what ever the cause, there is no denying they are gone.

Throughout history, people come and people go and right now we're leaning towards the gone side with an accelerated appetite for resources and the talk of growth growth growth. Somewhere I hope coast coast coast comes into play. Most do not want to hear that.

It is certainly sad, the way the earth's treasures have been exploited into almost nothing. I have always believed in the adage of many Native tribes: "Use what fills our needs, but guard the rest for seven generations". Very simply means don't be greedy. Too bad people don't seem to see that. There is already not enough left for our crandchildren, let alone for those many decades into the future. Disgusting!

Nookomis ♥ (a sad grandmother)