The disaster on Easter Island did not happen overnight - the forest vanished slowly over decades and the food supplies decreased gradually over centuries. With the environment ruined little by little, the advanced and complex society once existed on the island eventually collapsed to a state of near barbarism. The lesson of Easter Island is chilling and profound: Easter Island could be the small scale example of what the earth may be someday in the future with its fast growing population confronts shrinking resources. We could, like the islanders on Easter Island, rapidly exhaust the earth's fisheries, tropical rain forests, fossil fuels, and much of our soil before we were able to develop the technologies that will take us beyond earth and terraforming other planets in the solar system. Will we learn from the lessons of Easter Island and have the collective wisdom and decision-making power needed to save the earth, human race and its civilization before it is too late, or we will be simply powerless in preventing the civilization from a total collapse and destruction, only time can tell!