I think that it is ironic that this article was published in 2005, before the United States went into a recession. Hopefully The U.S. is only going through a minor decline, as opposed to a full-fledged collapse, as described in the excerpt. This idea had me wondering if in the future people would travel to the U.S. to experience what people today experience when traveling to Myan cities, Greece, and Zimbabwe. Will people visit the U.S. wondering what happened to us? Jared Diamond talks about these societies and how the abandonment was more often than not, triggered by ecological problems: "people inadvertently destroying the environmental resources on which their societies depended". This sounds like something that could definitely lie ahead in the future for the United States. We have been doing this for many years now and everyone seems to be ignoring all of the red flags and warning signs. Mr. Diamond also discusses climate change, both natural and unnatural, and how that has an affect on falling societies. Global warming is an example of unnatural climate change because it is being inflicted by humans. I believe the earth can more easily bounce back from a natural climate change, like the Ice Age, than from global warming because a natural climate change occurs much slower. This gives the earth more time to adapt. Global warming is increasing at a rapid pace and neither the earth, or it's animals are going to have time to adapt.
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