So what?

So what's the point of it all? Who cares why people who lived on a far off island of ice over 600 years ago couldn't survive? 

The collapse of Norse Greenland can serve as an analogue for our own society. Its not too much of a stretch to see the parallels between Norse Greenland and our modern society. The Norse were reliant on timber - an unrenewable resource just the same as our society is reliant on unrenewable fossil fuels such as oil. Our high consumption of natural resources has led to the re-emergence of Malthusian views that our planet is reaching its limit. 

The Norse failed to adapt to natural climate change. The decrease in temperatures made it harder for not only the Norse to survive, but the livestock and agricultural crops. Contemporary society is also facing the threat of a change in climate with irreversible consequences. With the limited political progress made in trying to mitigate climate change, increasing emphasis is being placed on adapting to the coming impacts. Technology will invariably play a key role in this. Diamond (2005) argues over the past centuries technology has provided more problems that fixes. The is evident with the Norse analogue. The Norse created an irrigation system to improve their agricultural productivity, but in the long term it amplified and accelerated the degradation of the environment. 

The next two factors in the collapse of societies - enemy and friendly trade relations don't really translate to our world. There are only so many friends and enemies we can have, unless of course the aliens decide to get involved (Page, 2005). 

The failure to recognise issues and the failure to respond to them are two key failings that cause societies to prevent collapse. In Norse Greenland the lack of accurate historical information about past environments and climate meant that it would have been more difficult to recognise the decline in conditions, and it is evident that the Norse failed to respond successfully (Dugmore et al., 2007). Our society has a much greater wealth of information about our environment and so are able to recognise any issues much better than our Norse counterparts. However, we are fully aware of issues of deforestation, over-fishing, over-hunting, biodiversity loss, noise, air and water pollution, and yet little has actually been achieved in stopping/ reducing them. Norse Greenland was a single country that had the same culture, economy, political system and climate. Whereas our 'island' is made up of many countries with different cultures, economies and political agendas. This makes agreeing on a course of action more difficult.

These parallels between our society and that of Norse Greenland highlight some crucial factors that our society will have to confront in the future.