Book by Jared Diamond (http://jareddiamond.org/Jared_Diamond/Welcome.html)

It would appear that I am just as talented at complaining as I am at picking a time to start a book, because I really should begin by making the Singaporean-esque complaint that the recent weather is all too hot. It’s not just me, though: equatorial temperatures, soaring humidity levels and the urban heat island effect pits me against the unforgiving sun.

Just 5 years ago in July 2017, the country clocked in mean daily temperatures between 27.5C and 28.0C. In 2022, we saw a high mean daily temperature of 29.5C Southeast of the island. And as I took a walk, I can’t help but realise that we now have more buildings to trap heat than our trees can make up for. It’s the norm for an urban city, but we’re clearly erasing the line and allowing high-rise buildings to creep into our only line of defense against the sun. This book was a reminder for just how important our trees are, and Diamond’s first example already sets the tone for the rest of the book’s illustrations.

It seemed pretty apt that Diamond begins (Chapter 2) with the Easter Island as a lead-in example. It is the civilisation that draws most horrifying parallels to the situation we see around the world now where lush greenery makes way for selfish human needs. For the uninitiated, Easter Island presents us one of the worst instances of degradation: when European settlers re-discovered the island, they found a barren land with no trees above 3 metres tall with a devastated ecosystem. There were only about 2000 inhabitants remaining and living with mutual hostility while weak and emaciated, and far from the estimated population of 10000 at the island’s peak. Diamond makes the point clear: the island could not support the population at peak. But more crucially, that overpopulation could not have single-handedly caused the island’s collapse.

It pains anyone to know that the island once harboured a thriving native Polynesian culture, as evidenced by majestic and enormous stone moai (monolithic human figures) representing high-ranking ancestors, with the most impressive reaching a height of 65 feet and some 250 over tons. This story of grandeur however follows a dark history of ecological abuse.

The Easter palm trees were the most useful as they were suitable for homes, canoes and certainly the scaffolding that made these statues possible. Today, Easter’s ecosystem supports not a single native species of land birds and nesting seabird species. This begs the question: for statues of this scale, surely the population would have required large amounts of food and resources - for houses, ropes, supporting structures, canoes - to sustain their efforts. Where was the ecosystem that provided for them?

As it turns out, Easter Island was nothing close to a wasteland, but was instead a forest full of tall trees and very rich in plantation. It was also not just home to the Easter palm, but also to 21 other vanished species of trees, the tallest being the Alphitonia (or the Australian ash trees) at over 100 feet tall. This was best for canoes that islanders would use to transport resources across the island, when being on foot was not an option. For the ropes used in hoisting the tall statues, the bark of the Triumfetta semitriloba was the choice. Easter was also home to more than six native land bird species and even more remarkably, to over 25 nesting seabird species: the albatross, terns, tropicbirds, just to play favorites. This made it the richest breeding site across the Pacific.

It doesn’t take a secondary schooler to infer where the trees went: burnt for firewood, felled for canoes, for construction materials, etc. It was predicted that the island reached its peak population levels at around the early 1400s, and forest clearing followed correspondingly, only finishing in the 1600s when the local ecosystem also ended, correspondingly. And this puts into perspective that Easter is one of, and if not, the most extreme case of deforestation in the world, and it happened in isolation, long before the Europeans discovered the missing Polynesian landscape. It’s devastation is told by sites of incomplete chisels and completed moai outside the quarries of Rano Raraku, still eagerly awaiting transport.

I want to draw attention to a question I kept to the back of my head throughout bulk of the book’s historical recap: what was the last native thinking when they brought down the last palm tree? Or more succinctly,

Why would anyone cut down the trees that their lives depended on?

This made no sense to me even after 2 weeks of on-and-off thinking, and also to archaelogist Joseph Tainter in 1988. It seemed all too surreal that the entire civilisation only sat and watch as the lifeline of their lifeline ended there and then. And, to even allow the forest to reach such a state of degradation and yet further remove the last tree is simply mindboggling. Even the Once-ler kept the last seed for little Ted to bring into Thneedville for it to thrive and grow, but clearly such a thought was not spared for the last Truffula in Easter Island.

Diamond helpfully tells me that landscape amnesia (or creeping normalcy) is one of the chief reasons that people fail to anticipate problems, even till today. In essence, Diamond points out my blind spot in that I had assumed a tragic change in the landscape: one year there could have been a rich ecosystem supporting the flora and fauna and the chirping birds, with acres upon acres (okay, Easter Island was not that big) of palm trees ready for canoes and houses and statues to support, and the next, a single tree left. I could not have been any more blind: what realistically would have happened was that a handful of trees were felled each year, with saplings being replanted in an unused garden. It would have been next to undetectable by eye, and only the native elders would have recalled what the forest used to look like during their childhood - the same way that I would have next to no understanding of the tight-knitted kampung communities my parents and my grandparents once belonged to. Now I could have some sense of comfort: perhaps when the last tree was brought down, that tree no longer had any economic significance nor value to the community, just as the kampungs were no longer relevant when Singapore moved into high-rise living estates.

Diamond does echo my concern though. With how things are going around the world, the next generations may look back at us with the same astonishment and disbelief at our blindness towards our environment as we are doing now to the blindness of the Easter Islanders.

And to such (and beyond) is the degree that Diamond details his illustrations, each coated with his personal observations from travel to the region today. After such a successful warm-in to the context surrounding the book, Diamond goes on to explore the ecological histories of islands closer to home: Pitcairn Islands, Greenland and the relatively recent history of the Tokugowa. Diamond also explores the ancient histories of the Vikings, the Mayans and the Anasazi civilisations. This is a book that demands a some re-reads to fully understand Diamond’s storytelling, which is why this review comes 1.5 months since my last book review.

Diamond’s book is one-of-its-kind by far, featuring prominent and remarkable examples of past collapses spanning from the Polynesian societies to the Mayan societies to the Tikopians and Angkor, showing how ecological impacts occur in isolation and in response to the rest of the world. Diamond then draws these lessons back to the modern society in the Americas, Africa and in China and Australia, and the book culminates in 3 healthy chapters highlighting the takeaways and why ecological problems that face our predecessors continue to challenge us today.

Personally, I’m as optimistic that humans today have the means to tackle this issue, and although slow, I am hopeful to see progress as the concerns over global warming and being slow-cooked to death continue to tickle the air-conditioned world today. What sets us apart from our predecessors is that we now sit on over 2000 years of failings and respectable attempts for us to learn from, none of which were ever afforded to our clueless ancestors.

This book review is written in an odd format (I realise), due in part because I don’t have the bravery to admit that I have not fully rationalised Diamond’s takeaways, but also in larger part because this book’s value is in its story-telling, and it is a piece of literature that is worth each of its 500-something pages. For its historical lectures and for its terrifying illustrations of what would happen if we turn blind to our environment again, I’m satisfied with what I took away on my first read.