Easter's End

Page 425.  The general point made by Jared Diamond in his work Easter’s End is that if societies use up their resources, they become extinct.  More specifically, Diamond suggests that if American society doesn’t learn from the Easter Islanders mistakes, we will end up like them.  He writes, “unlike the Easter Islanders, we have histories of the past –information that can save us” (p. 431).  In this passage, Diamond is suggesting that we can save ourselves and learn from past mistakes of others.  In conclusion, it is Diamond’s belief that we can save ourselves from the fate of cultures like the Easter Islanders if we use our resources wisely and start living differently.

            In my view, Diamond is right because society needs to realize how wasteful we are being of our resources and start coming up with a plan to save our earth.  For example, if everyone were to start realizing that we don’t need buildings everywhere and we don’t need our inefficiently fueled cars as much as everyone thinks we do, our earth would start to somewhat recover slowly.  Although Diamond might object that people won’t resist this change, I maintain that although people will resist, the change will be well worth it to continue our society.  Therefore, I conclude that we need to learn from past mistakes and society needs to start making better decisions to help our earth recover before it is too late.