Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed

by Jared Diamond

In connection with the mining industry, I mentioned that the most effective pressure on mining companies to change their practices has come not from individual consumers picketing mine sites, but from big companies that buy metals (like DuPont and Tiffany) and that sell to individual consumers. A similar phenomenon has unfolded in the timber industry. While the largest consumption of wood is for home construction, most homeowners don’t know, select, or control the choice of forestry companies producing the wood used in their house. Instead, the customers of forestry companies are big forest products companies, like Home Depot and IKEA, and big institutional buyers, like the City of New York and the University of Wisconsin.