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In modern times, Easter Island is deforested and depends on support from Chile as well as tourism for its local economy.
Some, for example Jared Diamond in his book <cite>Collapse</cite>, have cited Easter Island as a cautionary tale for what happens when a society foolishly squanders its natural resources without regard for the future, a process that admittedly happens much faster in the restricted case of an island. Hopefully by the time we've used all our resources [[the Rapture]] will have already come. Of course, it's possible the residents of Easter Island thought some sort of Rapture was going to bail them out of their crisis, but none ever came.
