Prologue : a tale of two farms -- Two farms -- Collapses, past and present -- Vanished Edens? -- A five-point framework -- Businesses and the environment -- The comparative method -- Plan of the book -- pt. 1. Modern Montana -- 1. Under Montana's big sky -- Stan Falkow's story -- Montana and me -- Why begin with Montana? -- Montana's economic history -- Mining -- Forests -- Soil -- Water -- Native and non-native species -- Differing visions -- Attitudes towards regulation -- Rick Laible's story -- Chip Pigman's story -- Tim Huls's story -- John Cook's story -- Montana, model of the world

Pt. 2. Past societies -- 2. Twilight at Easter -- The quarry's mysteries -- Easter's geography and history -- People and food -- Chiefs, clans, and commoners -- Platforms and statues -- Carving, transporting, erecting -- The vanished forest -- Consequences for society -- Europeans and explanations -- Why was Easter fragile? -- Easter as metaphor -- 3. The last people alive : Pitcairn and Henderson Islands -- Pitcairn before the Bounty -- Three dissimilar islands -- Trade -- The movie's ending -- 4. The ancient ones : the Anasazi and their neighbors -- Desert farmers -- Tree rings -- Agricultural strategies -- Chaco's problems and packrats -- Regional integration -- Chaco's decline and end -- Chaco's message -- 5. The Maya collapses -- Mysteries of lost cities -- The Maya environment -- Maya agriculture -- Maya history -- Copn -- Complexities of collapses -- Wars and droughts -- Collapse in the southern lowlands -- The Maya message -- 6. The Viking prelude and fugues -- Experiments in the Atlantic -- The Viking explosion -- Autocatalysis -- Viking agriculture -- Iron -- Viking chiefs -- Viking religion -- Orkneys, Shetlands, Faeroes -- Iceland's environment -- Iceland's history -- Iceland in context -- Vinland -- 7. Norse Greenland's flowering -- Europe's outpost -- Greenland's climate today -- Climate in the past -- Native plants and animals -- Norse settlement -- Farming -- Hunting and fishing -- An integrated economy -- Society -- Trade with Europe -- Self-image -- 8. Norse Greenland's end -- Introduction to the end -- Deforestation -- Soil and turf damage -- The Inuit's predecessors -- Inuit subsistence -- Inuit/Norse relations -- The end -- Ultimate causes of the end -- 9. Opposite paths to success -- Bottom up, top down -- New Guinea highlands -- Tikopia -- Tokugawa problems -- Tokugawa solutions -- Why Japan succeeded -- Other successes

Pt. 3. Modern societies -- 10. Malthus in Africa : Rwanda's genocide -- A dilemma -- Events in Rwanda -- More than ethnic hatred -- Buildup in Kanama -- Explosion in Kanama -- Why it happened -- 11. One island, two peoples, two histories : the Dominican Republic and Haiti -- Differences -- Histories -- Causes of divergence -- Dominican environmental impacts -- Balaguer -- The Dominican environment today -- The future -- 12. China, lurching giant -- China's significance -- Background -- Air, water, soil -- Habitat, species, megaprojects -- Consequences -- Connections -- The future -- 13. "Mining" Australia -- Australia's significance -- Soils -- Water -- Distance -- Early history -- Imported values -- Trade and immigration -- Land degradation -- Other environmental problems -- Signs of hope and change

Pt. 4. Practical lessons -- 14. Why do some societies make disastrous decisions? -- Road map for success -- Failure to anticipate -- Failure to perceive -- Rational bad behavior -- Disastrous values -- Other irrational failures -- Unsuccessful solutions -- Signs of hope -- 15. Big businesses and the environment : different conditions, different outcomes -- Resource extraction -- Two oil fields -- Oil company motives -- Hardrock mining operations -- Mining company motives -- Differences among mining companies -- The logging industry -- Forest Stewardship Council -- The seafood industry -- Businesses and the public -- 16. The world as a polder : what does it all mean to us today? -- Introduction -- The most serious problems -- If we don't solve them... -- Life in Los Angeles -- One-liner objections -- The past and the present -- Reasons for hope.