With the forces of nature actively at work in earthquakes, wildfires, tsunami warnings, and droughts of late, Jared Diamond's best-seller Collapse takes on new meaning in Southern California. The current interactive multimedia exhibit, "Collapse?", at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles is worth an hour's visit. The exhibit draws from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author's examination of the causes of environmental failure in ancient civilizations and contemporary societies, including the classic Maya civilization and currently Montana and Australia.
But clearly in Southern California, the future is now, with the intersection of many critical factors that thrust a society into environmental difficulty, Diamond contends. And it's primarily about water, we are starkly reminded. With 75 percent of its water imported from far-off rivers, the SoCal area from LA to San Diego remains a desert, artificially pumped up through irrigation pipelines into the 8th largest economy in the world (larger than Canada). Without these projects, the region would naturally accommodate 1 million, not the current 20 million, people.
