Montana: On the Verge of Collapse - PERC

To the
READER
In his latest book, Collapse: How Societies Succeed or Fail, Pulitzer Prize-winning
author Jared Diamond attempts to explain how a number of small, isolated
societies, from Easter Island to Greenland, destroyed their environments and
disappeared. A chapter of the book is devoted to the state of Montana. Diamond
says that Montana’s environmental problems “include almost all of the dozen types
of problems that have undermined pre-industrial societies in the past, or that now
threaten societies elsewhere in the world as well.”
Kendra Okonski, a native of Montana who now lives in England, doesn’t
accept Diamond’s treatment of Montana. In this essay, “Montana: On the Verge
of Collapse?” she argues that Diamond has misread Montana’s history and mis-
understands its environmental conditions and their causes. Her essay is adapted
from an essay published in Energy & Environment in 2005 as part of a special issue
dedicated to the book Collapse. We are publishing it as part of the PERC Policy
Series and, specifically, a series on the changing western United States sponsored
by the DuFresne Foundation and the M. J. Murdock Charitable Trust.
Since 2001, Okonski has been the environment program director for the In-
ternational Policy Network, an institute based in London. She is editor or coeditor
of several books, including The Water Revolution (forthcoming), Environment and
Health (2004), and Adapt or Die (2003), and is a fellow of the Royal Society for the
Arts. Previously, Okonski worked as a researcher at the Competitive Enterprise Insti-
tute in Washington, D.C. She has a degree in economics from Hillsdale College.
We appreciate the cooperation of Bill Hughes of Multi-Science Publishing
Co., Ltd., and Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, editor of Energy & Environment. The
author also thanks Andrew Morriss, Robert Natelson, and Julian Morris for their
assistance. The PERC Policy Series is edited by Jane S. Shaw; Mandy-Scott Bachelier
is production manager and graphic artist. PERC, the Property and Environment
Research Center, is a nonprofit institute dedicated to improving environmental
quality through property rights and markets. It is located in Bozeman, Montana.