Toastmasters CC3

Respected Judge, members of the jury, and esteemed audience in the gallery. Today I am going to present to you a case about a crime which had been committed a long time ago, but is similar to a crime being committed currently. My case discusses events which took place between 900 AD and 1600 AD, and I will present this case and draw some parallels with a crime taking place in the 21^st century. At the end of my testimony, I sincerely hope that this court will acknowledge that there is a problem which the court of human society must address. The problem of overexploitation.

My case takes me to the Polynesian land of Easter Island. Easter Island is perhaps the most remote piece of land in the world. It is about 3700 km away from the Pacific coast of Chile and 2000 km away from its nearest Polynesian islands. Its total area is 170 square km. It is about 27 degrees south of the equator, therefore it has a milder climate and its three volcanoes on the island give it the supposed benefit of fertile soil.

But its geographical position means that it is colder than most Polynesian islands and a lot of tropical crops like coconut don’t grow well on the island. The surrounding ocean is also too cold for coral growth which results in less fish species. The excessive wind makes farming difficult as it drops breadfruit before they are ripe and exacerbates erosion. Rainfall is comparable to California which means lack of freshwater streams. Nevertheless, at its peak of civilization, Easter Island was able to sustain a population of around 15000 people.

Easter Island is perhaps most famous for its gigantic stone statues, shown here. These statues are called moai and they are almost always placed on a base called the ahui. The ahu are rectangular platforms made of rubble held together by stone walls. They can weigh as much as 9000 tonnes and are up to 13 feet high and up to 500 feet wide. They can hold a multiple of moai which are stone statues on average 13 feet tall and weigh up to 80 tons. They are a spectacular sight and even an UNESCO world heritage.

The statues represent ancestors of the natives and some of them had a pukao on top which is a cylinder of red volcanic rock. Since the island was divided into around 12 territories, each section – although sharing essential resources such as food, stone, and timber with each other – would erect their own statues and compete with the others for the tallest. One of the biggest examples of one-upmanship.

But the mind boggling question is, how did they transport these tall and heavy structures onto the ahu without any cranes? Present day Easter Island show no evidence of tall trees which would be required to make ropes and timber to drag these statues from the stone quarry to the coast. The barren wasteland also makes it difficult to imagine how the islanders could have provided food for the construction workers, which estimates 25% additional food requirement for its population.

Data from recent excavations, however, have shown that palm trees up to 65 feet tall had existed in Easter. And other species of trees over 100 feet tall. These trees were probably what were used to get ropes and timber to drag these huge statues. They were also used to make canoes for fishing porpoises and tuna which are virtually nonexistent in the islanders’ diet today. The diet also consisted of about 25 species of sea birds, evidence of which was found in the disposed bones along with the fish bones.

Shockingly, 24 of those bird species are extinct on the island today. Radiocarbon dating also indicates a high level of deforestation till around 1700 coinciding with the rapid construction of statues.

When the first European explorers arrived at Easter, they saw no trees over 10 feet tall and the raw material the locals desired the most was timber.

The overall picture for Easter is among the most extreme example of forest destruction in the world. This led to loss of raw materials, loss of wild caught foods, and decreased yield of crops such as taro, yams, and plantain due to subsequent erosion. Starvation led to cannibalism and at the nadir of Easters civilization, the biggest insult you could snarl at an enemy was “The flesh of your mother sticks between my teeth”.

Your honor, Easter’s isolation is the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources. Easter’s collapse haunts most historians because the parallels between Easter Island and the modern world are chillingly obvious. Due to globalization, all countries now share each others’ resources just like the different clans at Easter did, leading to a lot of overexploitation in various natural resources. Just to give you a few quick examples:

Our habits have led to collapse of atlantic cod stocks as seen by the abrupt drop in 1992 due to overfishing. Even cessation of fishing hasn’t improved the situation.

Another resource we have been abusing is oil. Oil takes millions of years to form, but as you can see we may already be hitting peak production, and once you’re on top the only way to go is down! At the worst case this can lead to lower living standards in both developing and developed countries because we are so dependent on petroleum products.

There are measures we can take as human society to ensure we don’t end up like Easter Island. In the case of fisheries, we can avoid collapses of other fish species by regulating fishing practices and ensuring a balance between fish replenishment and harvest. To ensure that our economies don’t collapse if we exceed peak oil, we must look toward cleaner and sustainable energy resources.

Easter Island was as isolated in the Pacific Ocean as the world is in space. And just like when the islanders had nowhere to turn to for help, our human society also has no escape route if we keep plundering our resources if our troubles increase. Easter Island is a perfect metaphor for a worst case scenario and we have to stay as far away from that as possible.