save the last tree for me

SAVE THE LAST TREE FOR ME


I think I just did an article referring to Easter Island, when the last tree was used. Obviously, a society that gets their protein from fish would be pretty silly to get rid of the last canoe material. The question becomes, why would a society willingly use the last of their life sustaining energy? I believe we rambled on for a bit about entrenched interests and overpopulation. This article will somewhat parallel the last, but I do have a new idea I would like to try on you. The myth of substitution as applied to that island civilization. There was a long thread of a discussion on another forum, I believe The Oil Drum, on the last tree being cut down at Easter Island. While I didn’t read it completely, and while my memory is never exact, I think the general gist of it was to an actual argument over whether the last tree was even cut down or whether the large trees were all gone but smaller species were left, all in accordance with the Easter Island chapter in Jared Diamond’s book “Collapse”. I love that book, I’ve read it twice, but it can’t be considered the last authority on what it covers. There is simply too much speculation over incomplete evidence. It seemed the argument on the thread had degenerated into whether the book was correct or not rather than over the logic of certain speculations. My idea here could be totally wrong, but it does address the problem with larger trees disappearing.

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If the larger trees were indeed used for fishing, then it certainly doesn’t make sense that the last large tree was cut down to transport the last statue of some ugly dude from the quarry to its resting place. Even if the current fishing fleet was quite large, doesn’t it make sense that the leaders would worry about replacement as the fleet shrank from normal wear and tear? Of course, then we get into the question of how people respond to resource depletion. Are they just butt ignorant and avoid planning for the future, unwilling to cut into their profit margins? I find this a little hard to believe. The smart and ruthless ones rise to the top, so how can they just ignore such an obvious problem? I can see the current crop of puppetmasters ignoring infertile soil and other agricultural issues since we live so far divorced from nature, but that certainly didn’t apply to a society living in a closed environment and based on farming. And yet all civilizations fall from overpopulation and resource depletion. So what was the thinking behind the use of the last tree? Are we asking the wrong questions? What if the last large tree was cut for rolling statues because there was no pressing need for fishing? If the existing fishing fleet was adequate for bringing in a small amount of the required protein, would it then make sense to keep playing the religious appeasement/power politics game that electing the statues represented?

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Electing monuments is not an activity resource poor societies engage in. Societies build them using surplus energy. The islanders weren’t electing statues pleading with the gods for better weather. They were enjoying a surplus. Then something went wrong that coupled with the overpopulation of a prosperous society spelled disaster. The islanders were having a grand old time, procreating like bunnies and putting their excess energy into putting up statues. Which might seem odd, until you look at our millions of square acres of asphalt in freeways and parking lots we will leave behind. If you aren’t knowledgeable about cars, how much sense did all those roads make? A Roman road makes sense, those could still be used for animals and wagons, but current roads will be tore up in no time from that kind of use. They are well made, at least in context to our throw away society, but only for inflated rubber. Even if the asphalt holds up better than I am imagining, what about those strange squares at the end of all these roads? In several hundred years of the next Dark Ages where all knowledge is lost as electronic media and acid paper fall apart, imaging what the ideas for our roads will turn to.

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Perhaps the population was already either fed through land based livestock rather than fishing, or animal protein was just for the elite and thus the existing fishing fleet was more than large enough to use through the current generation. The question of wood shortages never can up. It wasn’t a problem. The small trees and shrubs were good enough for cooking so the large trees could be used for statues. Perhaps there were enough large trees left for slower but continued building until catastrophe struck. Lets say that the population had grown through surplus, all was well, then a drought and/or tsunami hit ( I don’t know if that was discredited through others research, I’m just using that as an example ). Hell, it could have been an earlier avian flu that a wild bird brought to the island which killed a huge chicken population which had made fishing boats unnecessary. It wasn’t that the people used up the last of one vital resource, it was that they had a good enough substitute until disaster struck.

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Let me spell out our correlation here. We lost the widespread knowledge, but far more importantly paved over the infrastructure of our pre-petroleum solar energy based economy. When disaster strikes, drought or wheat rust or genetically modified foods run amok or even just the down side of Peak Oil falling quicker than expected, we don’t have the resources we need for the new challenge and our overpopulation helps us die-off quicker. The islanders had plenty of protein and food without fishing, until that source was endangered and they couldn’t go back to fishing as the large trees were gone. We are totally dependent on oil. Endanger that ( a nuke in Saudi Arabia would pretty much be game over globally still leaving plenty of oil in the ground ), and we don’t have the old, used up resources to fall back on. We might be able to turn to organics, we know how, but the population is too far removed from those fields and not only are they starving from lack of transportation, they also are freezing in the winters. You can’t go back to animal manure fertilized fields surrounding population centers if the fields are asphalt and the animals are thousands of miles away in feed lots. Not quick enough to avoid die-off after a disaster.

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Just think about it before you trust in Obammy’s green shoots.

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Here's a mention of a new start up that has a product that looks pretty cool.  And I'm not even all gay over growing turnips like most of you are ( ok, to be fair gardening is a darn good idea, I just hate the thirty year mortgage for a garden idea ).  http://www.blindsquirl.com/
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