What is spooky is that not just one but two of the necessary conditions outlined by the article are straight up resource depletion - the unsustainable harvestin

What is spooky is that not just one but two of the necessary conditions outlined by the article are straight up resource depletion - the unsustainable harvesting of timber resulting in complete ecosystem destruction, and then the subsequent depletion of the shallower coal deposits. There has been plenty written about the general dynamics of collapse and how when things get more expensive, all the built up complexity starts to fail under its own weight. Here, the need for heating (and specifically heating with coal) provided enough of a demand to motivate the harder work of technology development and deeper mining, but not too much of a demand that would have squeezed society. If no coal deposits had existed, or the technology had not been developed, or the technology wasn't productive enough to keep up as the difficulty of mining went up, or enough deeper deposits didn't exist until the next energy source (oil?) was found we'd be reading a tale about a once great society collapsing, cities being abandoned, or perhaps even another Easter Island. It puts a little different flavor on the current worries of climate change, resource depletion, and ecosystem destruction. I guess we're just leaping before we look yet again, this time with the whole planet after having used all of the easily-accessible dino juice...