Why Rome Collapsed: Lessons For the Present

No nation clinging to the current "waste is growth / landfill economy" will survive the emergent global polycrisis.

Identifying why the western Roman Empire collapsed in 476 AD has been a parlor game for at least two centuries, since Edward Gibbon published his monumental The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Abridged). Gibbon concluded Christianity had a major role in weakening the Empire, a view few today share.

Part of the fun of the parlor game …