Jared Diamond's essay (lucky you, you can read it online) in Best American Essays turned out to be as great as expected. Coincidentally, it's all about the sudden collapse of the Mayan civilization and how that situation is eerily reminiscent of America's own unsustainability.

Some of us have faith that new technologies will succeed in cleaning up the toxic materials in our air, water, soil, and foods without the horrendous cleanup expenses that we now incur.

...

In fact, technology merely constitutes increased power, which produces changes that can be either for the better or for the worse. All of our current environmental problems are unanticipated harmful consequences of our existing technology. There is no basis for believing that technology will miraculously stop causing new and unanticipated problems while it is solving the problems that it previously produced.

The final misconception holds that environmentalists are fear-mongering, overreacting extremists whose predictions of impending disaster have been proven wrong before and will be proven wrong again. Behold, say the optimists: water still flows from our faucets, the grass is still green, and the supermarkets are full of food. We are more prosperous than ever before, and that's the final proof our system works.

Well, for a few billion of the world's people who are causing us increased trouble, there isn't any clean water, there is less and less green grass, and there are no supermarkets full of food.

It's just like Ishmael says: a few thousand years ago, civilization rolled its giant flying contraption off a cliff -- and we think it's flying just because it hasn't hit ground yet. Enjoy our seats in first class.