The Rapa Nui people were former inhabitants of the Easter Islands. Their disastrous collapse is one with symbolic meaning and can be characterized with that of human beings today. Surprisingly, the Rapa Nui was an innovative civilization and ironically, it was their strength that caused their eventual downfall. Their beginnings were unknown but it is suspected they reached the remote island by canoes they fashioned from wood. Once they reached the island, they immediately began consuming their resources in large amounts, creating large buildings, supplies, and most distinctly, the Moai, statues created from stone mined further in land, in order to commemorate their ancestors. To move them towards the shore, where the majorities are placed, the Rapa Nui people utilized wood to use as pulleys, levers, or inclined slopes. As their population boomed into the tens of thousands, their consumption increased drastically until finally, the island could no longer supply for them and the population dwindled to around or less than a thousand. Their unsustainable development, meaning their lack of consideration for the future, caused their near extinction. A globalized example of their situation can be seen today from human’s continuation in their methods of advancement. Whether it be fossil fuels, fish, or like the Rapa Nui, trees, our growth is unsustainable in nearly every way. Our massive consumption and increasing demand for fossil fuels as our sole energy source is exacerbating and creating a problem that will only get worse as we continue down this path. The rapid decline of our natural resources resembles the wood supplies as seen on Easter Island only a few centuries before. And like the Rapa Nui people, by using up all our resource to its limits, there will be no turning back or “last resort” to initiate. Their usage of wood until the last tree was cut off prevented them from leaving and the same goes for us and nearly all resources available to us, except instead of the possibility of leaving, we will have nowhere to go even if we had the choice. Thus, many may say humans are doomed to extinction as we have already travelled down this path too far to turn around. However, there is still hope. Our demand for energy has forced the beginning of research on previously unexplored fields such as solar energy. Renewable energy sources are being advanced in order to prevent Armageddon. The determining factor between us and the Rapa Nui probably is that we have realized the path that we are walking down is one of extinction for all of mankind, thus, we have began a push for change, no matter how small. Environmental treaties between China and US—major contributors to greenhouse gas emission—established an agreement in which US would reduce its emission rate by a quarter or more by 2025 and China would reach its peak by 2030 or sooner. Wealthy European countries have also recently offered billions of dollars in trying to prevent developing countries from emitting as much greenhouse gases as they do today. Thus, in many ways, with the help of globalization and improvements with technological innovation, we can prevent a crisis similar to the one the Rapa Nui ran into.