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Originally Posted by Dante Hicks
Having said that, maybe. It's not straight-forward to tell - we might be using up "environmental capital" (to borrow the terminology of others) to the point where a crash is unavoidable. If that is the case then our current state would certainly be classed as a decline (even if living standards are presently rising generally).
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I only browsed the book in waterstones but the examples that diamond uses for collapse are or were individual societies in specific locations, im not really sure if that can be applicable to the earth as a whole. To give an analogy with the biosphere2 'experiment' relatively or completely isolated communities are always going to be vulnerable to unforseen circumstances, but globalisation and world commerce spreads the risk. Provided theres no global catastrophe - and im talking in terms of a comet strike the 'global zero-sum' game will mean no collapse.
Had the boxing day tsunami occured in another lifetime it would probably have been included as an example of extinction due to massive environmental damage, but no civilisation was wiped out because other people could help. Even climate change is a zero-sum game afaik.