Life in the Rear-view Mirror

Learning from Easter Island

Easter Island is a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean about 3700 km west of Chile and about 2100 km east of its closest neighbour, the Pitcairn Islands. Its isolation made it a microcosm of Mother Earth.

In shape it resembles Sicily, and even has a large volcano like Mt. Etna, in addition to two smaller ones. Whereas, Sicily has an area of about 26,000 square kilometres, Easter Island only measures about 160 square kilometres: a really small island in the middle of the ocean.

When its first inhabitants arrived about a thousand years ago, it was a veritable tropical paradise replete with a tropical forest and wild life. Over the centuries it flourished, reaching a peak population of 15,000 near the end of the 16th century. Before its peak, the island was hit by a perfect storm: increasing population, increasing consumption, and dysfunctional governance. Does it sound familiar? The result was disastrous and its story is well documented.

The storyline is pretty simple. The islanders over fished and over harvested the forest, while its population kept increasing. The island could have sustained its peak population if it wasn't for an intense tribal competition to build bigger and bigger stone monuments. Was it driven by religion or megalomania? It was probably a bit of both. While they practiced ancestor worship, they clearly did it to extremes.

Each tribe, of a possible twelve that lived on the island, built humongous stone heads and busts (moai), on top of large stone pedestals to honour their ancestors. Some monuments weighed as much as 80 or 90 tonnes. For transporting the big stones they chopped down trees. They used the trunks as rails over which they pulled the huge stones from the quarry to their final resting destination. This process, carried over many centuries, turned a tropical paradise into a desert.

Any thinking person could have seen the disaster coming, but their tribal leaders failed to take the necessary action – stopping the mindless consumption of trees – just to out do the rival tribal leaders. As the saying goes, they were cutting off their noses just to spite their faces.

When there were no more trees to cut down, they resorted to pulling down each other's monuments. The destruction frenzy went on until none were left standing, and when people were starving they started cannibalizing members of rival tribes. By the time the first Europeans arrived, in the early 1700s, the population of Easter Island had been reduced to less than 3,000.

The island had a peak population density of about 100 per square kilometre, which is not high by today's standards. For example, Sicily's is at about 200, and its neighbour's (Sardinia) is about 70. Therefore, it's reasonable to suggest that, if the Easter Islanders hadn't been obsessed with erecting stone statues for their deceased ancestors, they could have sustained their peak population like other islanders.

If they had cut down only the trees needed to allow sustainable farming, their population might have increased even 150 per square kilometre. But religion got in the way. Sounds familiar? 

Just like Easter Island, our Earth is isolated, far from our closest and inhospitable neighbours. We are stuck here to make the best of it. Like it, we face the same perfect storm. We have sufficient resources to sustain a modest level of per capita consumption, which is below our current level; population is increasing relentlessly and some religious institutions are against birth control; and the rhetoric of our tribal leaders, in some ways, mimics that of the islanders, just before their collapse.

Keeping up with the Jones is contaminating our biosphere and consuming resources that belong not only to us, but also to future generations. "I need a new iphone, ipad, or ipod because my friend just got one" is not a good reason to buy one. "I need an SUV because my neighbour just got one" is also not a good reason. It's the same destructive rationale of the Easter Islanders: "I need to erect a bigger monument to my father because my friend (or rival) erected a bigger one to his".

Why do we need gas-guzzling SUVs to drive the kids to school? Is it solely for self-aggrandisement? Burning more hydrocarbons by driving bigger cars is making the air we breathe more hazardous to our health. Isn't our health, and that of our friends and family, more important than impressing people? And why do the kids need to be driven to school nowadays? Mine weren't! Is it just to show off the big expensive cars?

I hope that we, including our political leaders, have more common sense and courage than our Easter Island counterparts to do what's right for the community: to do what's necessary for the common good!

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For those interested in reading more about how Easter Islanders destroyed their earthly paradise should read, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, by Jared Diamond, 2005.