“Will tourists someday stare mystified at the rusting hulks of New York’s skyscrapers, much as we stare today at the jungle-overgrown ruins of Maya cities?” 

There’s no guarantee that a great civilization will continue to exist. Some of the great collapses of history happened at the height of those societies’ powers. Systemic weaknesses may underlie today’s civilizations, which cannot long ignore such risks lest they too collapse, leaving behind only empty buildings as monuments.

“The processes through which past societies have undermined themselves by damaging their environments fall into eight categories, whose relative importance differs from case to case: deforestation and habitat destruction, soil problems (erosion, salinization, and soil fertility losses), water management problems, overhunting, overfishing, effects of introduced species on native species, human population growth, and increased per-capita impact of people.” 

These are the eight environmental issues that affect all societies, past and present. Any combination of these problems can lead to an environmental crisis and possibly the collapse of the society involved. Four additional problems burden modern societies: human-caused climate change, environmental toxins, energy shortages, and loss of photosynthetic capacity.

“Past peoples were neither ignorant bad managers who deserved to be exterminated or dispossessed, nor all-knowing conscientious environmentalists who solved problems that we can’t solve today. They were people like us, facing problems broadly similar to those that we now face. They were prone either to succeed or to fail, depending on circumstances similar to those making us prone to succeed or to fail today. Yes, there are differences between the situation we face today and that faced by past peoples, but there are still enough similarities for us to be able to learn from the past.” 

It’s easy to dismiss ancient failed cultures as foolish, but today’s civilizations often face the same problems and struggle to solve them. What matters isn’t who’s smarter or better but what we can learn from past human mistakes.