The Future Eaters

The title refers to human colonists—not just the Europeans arriving in Australia but all of them, every group of humans arriving in new lands since we first left Africa. Finding seemingly-unlimited resources; discovering that, oops, they're not unlimited; collapsing; sometimes surviving in degraded state—sometimes not.

Book was slightly too long but covered new (to me) material in geology, evolutionary biology especially the rise of birds to fill niches that mammals fill in other environments, and pre-European cultures of Australasia. Most distinguishing feature was its complete Australiocentricity, the references that took a moment to understand or even flew entirely over my head, the almost complete non-treatment of the Americas as if they were irrelevant. That was refreshing.

Money quote, from near the end:

The European history of the colonisation of Australia has followed the same pattern as has the history of all of the colonists of the ‘new' lands. All have arrived at what they are convinced is a virgin land. All have found resources that have never before been tapped, and all have experienced a short period of tremendous boom, when people were bigger and better than before, and when resources seemed so limitless that there was no need to fight for them. Because there was enough for everyone, egalitarian, carefree societies with the leisure to achieve great things, have prospered. There was a period of optimism, when people imagined great futures for their nations. Inevitably, however, each group has found that the resource base is not limitless. Each has experienced a period when the competition for shrinking resources becomes sharper. The struggle between people increases, whether it be a class struggle or a struggle between tribes. If people survive long enough, they eventually come into equilibrium with their newly impoverished land—and their lifestyles are ultimately dictated by the number of renewable resources that their ancestors have left them.