Ophuls, William. _Immoderate Greatness: Why Civilizations Fail_. North Charleston: Createspace, 2012. ---- Ophuls writes of civilization as if it were a tragic hero, doomed to fail because of its hubris. Civilizations require continuous input of matter, energy and morale. The moment a civilization stops progressing, it begins to decline. # Ecological Exhaustion This is the first biophysical limit he talks about. A civ achieves greater complexity by exploiting the resouces at its periphery. He calls civilization "the child of the Neolithic Revolution, of the widespread adoption of agriculture as a mode of production", and this always involved environmental degradation.