From Starhawk:

Flying into New Orleans reading Jared Diamond's Collapse, a whole history
of societies throughout history that have collapsed, mostly through
destroying their environment, deforestation, soil erosion, and related
mistakes. I can't help thinking that historians of the future will look
back on New Orleans' destruction in last summers' hurricanes with the same
kind of incredulity as we ponder the Easter Islanders' cutting of their
last trees. "How could they not have seen what they were doing?" they
might ask. "They knew that hurricanes would come, that the levees were
inadequate." That historian might go on to mark the summer of the
hurricanes as the watershed moment for the American Empire, the point where
its collapse became evident, if not in the lack of preparations for the
disaster, then in the utter failure of every major institution to respond
adequately. "It wasn't the beginning of the end, but it was the point where
the end became visible."