In his latest book, Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed, Jared Diamond attempts to provide a scientific account of the causes of societal collapse: “This book employs the comparative method to understand societal collapse to which environmental problems contribute … I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbours, political institutions, and other “input” variables postulated to influence a society’s stability. The “output” variables that I examine are collapse or survival, and form of the collapse if a collapse does occur. By relating output variables to input variables, I aim to tease out the influence of possible input variables on collapses.” (18) In so doing, he seeks to identify lessons for improving the chances that humanity will avoid or better cope with future calamities. Given this objective, five questions seem pertinent: First, how accurate is Diamond’s portrayal of the demise of the societies he describes (both those that collapsed and those that did not)? Second, how plausible are the reasons Diamond gives for societal collapse and sustainability? Third, how systematic is Diamond in his application of the rules that he derives? Fourth, to the extent that Diamond identifies lessons for current societies, to what extent does he apply those lessons appropriately? Fifth, what alternative theories might better explain past collapses and offer lessons for societal sustainability? For this special edition of Energy and Environment, Kendra Okonski and I asked several experts to evaluate specific aspects of Collapse in order to provide some tentative answers to these questions. Here I attempt to summarise the conclusions that we have drawn from those analyses and offer some of my own observations. 1. MAN BITES DOG STORIES AND OTHER FISHY TALES One of the persistent themes throughout Collapse is arborophilia – a love of trees. Thus, deforestation is assumed to be a significant driver of the collapse of many societies. Diamond asserts that “A rigorous, comprehensive, and quantitative application of this [comparative] method was possible for the problem of deforestation-induced collapses on Pacific islands. Prehistoric pacific peoples…

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