Easter Island is like a makeshift anthropological experiment along roughly these lines: take a few people, say 25 or so, move them thousands of miles from home to a small island with no mammals and only about 30 native plants, allow them several crop species but make water scarce, minimize the chance of escape or outside influence, and check back after, say, a thousand years. And so we did.

The history of Easter Island provides us with a striking example of the dependence of our species on an intact and healthy environment. It is a microcosm of what is happening to our planet, right now, only in slower motion.It is not a pretty picture.