{
  "type": "quote",
  "site": {
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    "language": "en",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com"
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  "formats": "Every page has two versions with the same data: JSON (the page address + .json) and markdown (the page address + .md). Append .json or .md to any `url` in this document.",
  "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/thus-because-we-are",
  "json": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/thus-because-we-are.json",
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  "slug": "thus-because-we-are",
  "text": "Thus, because we are rapidly advancing along this non-sustainable course, the world's environmental problems will get resolved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice, such as warfare, genocide, starvation, disease epidemics, and collapses of societies. While all of those grim phenomena have been endemic to humanity throughout our history, their frequency increases with environmental degradation, population pressure, and the resulting poverty and political instability.",
  "language": "en",
  "author": {
    "name": "Jared Diamond",
    "slug": "jared-diamond",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond"
  },
  "book": {
    "title": "Collapse",
    "slug": "collapse",
    "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse"
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  "chapter": null,
  "chapter_parent": null,
  "page": 498,
  "verified": false,
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  "other_languages": [],
  "topics": [
    {
      "name": "ecology",
      "slug": "ecology",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/ecology"
    }
  ],
  "source": {
    "name": "Wikiquote",
    "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_(2005)",
    "license": {
      "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
      "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
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  "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:07",
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    {
      "id": "c5c18fc6-c87d-4a7a-b22e-d7ff98697bb4",
      "slug": "two-types-of-choices",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/two-types-of-choices",
      "text": "Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial in tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives.",
      "language": "en",
      "character": null,
      "chapter": null,
      "chapter_parent": null,
      "page": 522,
      "verified": false,
      "original": null,
      "other_languages": [],
      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "beliefs",
          "slug": "beliefs",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beliefs"
        },
        {
          "name": "plans",
          "slug": "plans",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/plans"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_(2005)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:07"
    },
    {
      "id": "bbb539be-0f75-4eb7-ac83-359b17b393ad",
      "slug": "religious-values-tend",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/religious-values-tend",
      "text": "Religious values tend to be especially deeply held and hence frequent cause of disastrous behaviour. [...] The modern world provides us with abundant secular examples of admirable values to which we cling under conditions where those values no longer make sense [...] It appears to me that much of the rigid opposition to environmental concerns in the First World nowadays involves values acquired early in life and never again reexamined [...].",
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      "chapter": null,
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      "topics": [
        {
          "name": "religion",
          "slug": "religion",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/religion"
        },
        {
          "name": "beliefs",
          "slug": "beliefs",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/beliefs"
        }
      ],
      "source": {
        "name": "Wikiquote",
        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_(2005)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
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    },
    {
      "id": "9d3aeb34-d4ad-41ef-85ed-59c46e6e2c3c",
      "slug": "businesses-have-changed",
      "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/jared-diamond/collapse/businesses-have-changed",
      "text": "Businesses have changed when the public came to expect and require different behavior, to reward businesses for behavior that the public wanted, and to make things difficult for businesses practising behaviors that the public didn't want. I predict that in the future, just as in the past, changes in public attitudes will be essential for changes in businesses' environmental practices.",
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        {
          "name": "public opinion",
          "slug": "public-opinion",
          "url": "https://www.leafyquotes.com/topics/public-opinion"
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        "url": "https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond#Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed_(2005)",
        "license": {
          "label": "CC BY-SA 4.0",
          "url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/"
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      "added_at": "2026-09-25T22:52:07"
    }
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}