Ecological disaster theories don't hold water

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, by Jared Diamond, Allen Lane, €28.80.

One of the great tragedies of life is that you rarely know when you're doing something for the last time.

The men who cut down the last trees on Easter Island in the middle of the 17th century, however, had no such excuses.

The timber they gained presumably came in useful for erecting the giant statues that would one ...