Customer Reviews

A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

If you are politically active in any sphere -- environmental, feminist, race, labour issues -- and as a result you do a lifetime of research and reading and discussion, you often feel a sense of despair when attempting to explain your point of view to anyone who hasn't covered the same ground. Waving a booklist several pages long doesn't seem like a good way to win hearts and minds. So you wish for a book you could recommend that would really provide the broad overview, the minimal foundation of your own understanding.

For the automobile critic it's probably "Asphalt Nation." For the media critic it might be "Manufacturing Consent". Environmental economists have various basic texts to draw on, but at present I nominate Ponting as the best compromise between accessibility and comprehensiveness.

In one fairly brief volume he manages to summarize the technological and economic history of the human race, the central importance of food production throughout that history, and the implications of prior human experience for today's human experience. Ponting's chapter on the age of European expansion might be the best concise survey essay on colonialism that I've read. That one chapter alone is worth the price of admission, and offers a capable answer to the frequently asked question "Why can't the Third World make capitalism work?"

Without ranting, without apparent passion, Ponting calmly documents the astonishingly consistent historical record of blundering, self-deception, short-sightedness, and deliberate criminality that has led the G7 nations to the peak of world power. He has been criticized by some readers for insufficient attention to political or social-justice issues, or for insufficient outrage at some of the crimes he documents. I find his detached narrative viewpoint to be a valuable attribute of the book; it calms the reader and makes it possible to read with interest what would otherwise be a bloodcurdling narrative, and a horribly depressing one.

If I had to give just one book to a person who asked "but what's wrong with GNP accounting," or "what do you mean, 'unsustainable'" or "what does overconsumption mean?" I think I would now, unhesitatingly, recommend Ponting. It is ideal as a text for any high-school or undergraduate level class in economic history. It is ideal as the founding volume of any curious person's libary of environmental literature. It makes a handy reference work for anyone looking for a relevant statistic about population, fish stocks, the conquest of the Americas, epidemic diseases, and a host of other topics.

Ponting punctures cherished myths with the casual unconcern of a writer whose only concern is fact. GHW is perhaps the single most powerful anti-smugness medication (in one compact dose) that I could prescribe for any G7 resident.

If you have only one chance to convince a dear friend that environmental issues are real and urgent; if you have only one title on environmental issues in your upcoming class booklist; if you want a handy, solid, one-volume reference for those maddening internet discussions; if you need to explain to an office mate just why you are not so keen on untested GMO releases; or if you just want a book that will cause lively discussion for your reading club -- I can heartily recommend Ponting. He has earned a place in the environmentalist canon. I feel the impulse to give lots of copies away to friends and colleagues, and what higher praise is there?

In an age of specialization, the author provides a much-needed (and brilliant) general overview of man's impact on the planet. It is hard to imagine anyone, after reading this book, seriously arguing that the western lifestyle (and especially the American lifestyle) can be sustained much longer. We may succeed in hanging on for a few more years (especially if we manage to keep developing countries from attaining our own living standards), but it seems unlikely that our nationalistic political systems will be able to agree and implement the necessary global solutions (whatever those may be - it is not clear that there are any) in time.

This is an immensely valuable analysis, but I think that it is a 5-star topic hiding within a 3-star book. Let me give two reasons:
1. It is virtually impossible to substantiate his arguments without reading the extensive bibliography, a daunting task. For example, when he states that, in energy efficiency, "The United States is still 60 per cent less efficient than Italy and Japan", he needs a citation to support the statement. This applies throughout the book. My own writing has been concerned with global water and sanitation issues, and I know how easy it is to have a document which is more footnotes than text, but without references I cannot really make use of or defend any of his important statements.
2. As another reviewer has commented, the book needed a strong editor. I have not read the earlier (1991) version of this book, and so cannot make comparisons, but much of the book is so well written, and other parts so badly, that it feels as if the earlier version was very well edited, and then the updates were inserted on a word processor. The early chapters in particular have too many sentences with "and" linking ideas which need to be treated separately, and he is very sparing with punctuation which would have made the sense clearer. The acid test is reading the text aloud; often you will hesitate because you need to read to the end of the sentence before you can clearly identify its structure and subordinate clauses and hence the underlying ideas. A good editor would also have caught matters such as neutral pH being given as 6.5, the map accompanying the discussion on Sumer and its principal settlement, Uruk, omitting both names, and various typos. This may seem like nit-picking, but I had to struggle to get through the beginning of the book, and then was rewarded by the much higher quality later on.

I certainly do not regret buying the book, which has given me a much broader understanding of our present problems and the way we got where we are (he is particularly strong on the impact of colonialism and its modern-day successors) - but if you want to engage in serious debate with proponents of "business as usual" you will need many more hard facts to make your case.

Clive Ponting's book provides a very good introduction to the subject. It is well written and serves as an excellent starting point, introducing the important questions and providing thought provoking conclusions.

Comments that the book is inaccurate regarding Easter Island are illogical. As Ponting points out, the very first Europeans to arrive on the island found a society already devastated by the environmental degradation that it failed to prevent. The diseases inadvertantly spread to the Easter Islanders through this first European contact were not a primary cause of the downfall of the island civilization.

Clive Ponting's subtitle is slightly misleading, as this book is less about the history of civilization's collapse than a history of civilization's influence on the environment. This is a thorough and interesting study of how humans have changed or damaged their natural surroundings from the earliest hunter-gatherer days through the modern post-Industrial world. It seems that any modification of the environment has unintended and unexpected consequences down the road. Of course in the past few had the time or the vision to anticipate these consequences, and we are now living with the results of centuries of pollution, salinization, and general degradation. This is not a polemic but a well-argued study which asks us to consider whether our effect on the natural world has been more for good or ill. It is a good precursor to ideas later developed further in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, among others.

At last! I have stumbled on an explanation of human history that makes sense of the rises and falls, the wars, the conquerors, the plagues and the shopping habits of our specie. This is a grand overview of our impact on the planetary environment since the rise of agricultural societies about 12,000 years ago. Seeing the past through a green lens fills in missing pieces in the picture painted by standard historical texts. Starting with the microcosm of Easter Island where Polynesian settlers created one of the most advanced cultures of its day, only to devolve to cannibalism and failure after deforestation destroyed their soil, Ponting step-by-steps through the collapse of one society after another. He has assembled the archaeological data amassed in the modern era to establish his case that agriculture has been a disaster for humans and the planet. Consider that a Bushman, forced to live on the African desert, works less than half the hours of his agricultural counterpart, and enjoys a higher nutritional level than half of the world today. Or the reality that every agricultural economy in the past has crashed, repeatedly, with food production devastated by depleted, eroded soil, or salinization and waterlogging after irrigation. The author clearly establishes that fertile soil is the most critical and least replaceable resource in our tool kit. When one lays Ponting's assessment beside a current picture of world agriculture, with topsoil disappearing at one hundred times the rate of recovery, our future looks iffy. After this reading I am left wondering how we can ever achieve a meaningful "balance" given our past record. The planet supported about 4 million humans when we were all gatherer/hunters. Note that this puts us almost 6 billion over the top today, supported on a raft of petrochemical soil amendments. Perhaps we should beat our plowshares into swords?

Every conscious being on this planet should read this book because it is a history of how our species has radically changed the environment on this planet. If the accumulative facts on how humans have and continue to alter the environment we need to survive doesn't rise to the top of your priority list, then... what?

Clive Ponting's "A New Green History" is an ambitous book. Starting with the first hunters and gathers and moving on to present day industrial polluters, Ponting tries to document the damage mankind has inflicted on nature AND how this damage has affected the rise and fall of civilizations.

Despite the broad premise, for the most part, Ponting delivers. However, sometimes the information imparted is a rehashing what we learned in elementary school (e.g. whales were hunted to near extinction) or obvious (e.g. a reliable food supply is necessary for a civilization to develop) yet to make his argument Ponting has to gives these facts. Some of the facts make interesting reading, like how pollution generated by the Roman Empire can be documented in core samples taken from Artic Ice. Some facts, like the percentage of farms in Germany in the 1950s still using horses for plows, are just plain boring.

The book is really anchored by the first and last chapters. The first chapter details the causes of the complete decline of civilization on Easter Island. The last chapter documents how inaction today poses a clear risks to modern day civilization. Ponting could have been clearer in comparing the two civilizations, but he still makes the point that inaction or wrong action on envirommental issues can cause a civlization to fail.

There are those who say, the Pontings of the world are just "Chicken Littles." That environmentalists like him just enjoy the attention they get from saying the sky is falling (or the Ozone layering is thining). Yet, because in all the proceeding chapters Ponting established his credentials through tedious, or so tedious, documentation, he makes the case that modern day civilization is at risk and that this time Chicken Little is right.

His tone, that modern civilization will find solutions to our enviromental woes is cautious. He cites that the ban on PCBs as a success story, but he correctly points out that PCBs are just one source of pollution and much more needs to be done. At times Ponting flirts with condemming the democratic process, saying, in effect that elected officials are ineffective because they are beholden to an electorate that promotes jobs/development over the environment. This political stance weakens the book.

However, unlike some environementalists who harken for a simpler lifestyle, Ponting recognzies that pollution-generating appliances like refrigerators and televisions are staples of modern life and are here to stay. This acknowlegement strengthens the book.

Simply put, A New Green History is a compelling, well-documented work. For the first chapter alone it is worth buying. However, as the reader learns how the world-wide popluation of sheep and other farm animals has varied over time, A New Green History can also be used to induce sleep.

Haven't finished it yet. But I did stop in wonder for a good long while when I read that Plato (PLATO!) had given a good long description of the deforestation and erosion of Greece.

It covers more ground than the (similar point of view and many years later) Jared Diamond Collapse. For instance, in a later chapter that I skimmed early on, he talks about epidemics and sickness. Our best health care in the world, in Ponting's view, is mostly following, not altogether successfully, in the footsteps of basic sanitation--i.e., public health and nutrition trump treatment for disease.

I expect that I don't, and won't as I continue to read, agree with everything he says. But he does makes one think.

Well written, the only thing I crave is more graphics and images to illustrate the text. A great read for anyone with little to no knowledge of how we reached our current ecological crisis.

Awarding this book five stars has come as somewhat of a surprise to me. The text has a number of shortcomings that would ordinarily conspire to produce no more than a mediocre work. Somehow, in this instance, they instead play to each other's strengths to create a tome of rare quality, depth and relevance to our times.

The first negative aspect that stood out for me was the book's dry academic tone. I felt like I was being pounded with figures and statistics until I couldn't take any more. A friend of mine reached the saturation point after only a few excerpts. We couldn't help but wonder how many people would persevere in slogging through the text to absorb the invaluable information that it contained. We suspected very few.

Secondly, despite the breadth of its scope - attempting to cover the environmental history of the world since prehistoric times - the book comes off as one-dimensional. It simply chronicles the impact on nature that various civilisations have made through the history. It doesn't try to present an overarching thesis that it can back up with this data, nor does it suggest ways in which the present ecological degradation can be reversed.

Considering how thorough the book is at detailing the problems, lack of solutions is a sizeable omission. It is very difficult to walk away from this book thinking that our civilisation is anywhere but on the course to total collapse triggered by the breakdown of the biosphere that supports us. Ending on such a desolate note is all too likely to leave the reader feeling helplessly depressed over our inevitable self-destruction.

Taken together, these shortcomings are surprisingly effective at accomplishing what I suspect were Ponting's aims. Presenting reams of data from all time periods and parts of the world places the current ecological problems in a larger context that cannot be acquired from reading about the problems themselves. This broadened perspective is critically important when considering potential solutions. That the book doesn't suggest what these might be feels reflexively disappointing, but I consider it a strength. One pattern that emerges from the book is human capacity for sticking our heads in the sand as the world burns and continuing with business as usual well past the point where corrective action was urgently needed. Expecting to be offered solutions is a part of that mentality. By being devastatingly clear about the nature and severity of the problems and offering no solutions, the book sends a clear message that it is up to us to put in the hard work of discovering what those solutions might be and implementing them. It also serves as a rude awakening from our dependency on happy endings. In this instance, there likely won't be one. This might be a bitter pill for some to swallow, but I believe a necessary one. I've come across far too many people who willingly refrain from looking at the facts right in front of them because they know full well that doing so would disturb the comforts of their daily lives.

What we do need is comprehensive and credible information to base our analysis and decisions on. The book delivers it in spades. Its dry academic tone and focus on facts rather than rhetoric are real assets here. There's no need for Ponting to argue a thesis. The patterns from the data are so clear that the reader cannot help but become utterly concerned for the future of our world. Reading about yet another instance of human population growth outstripping its food supply, yet another way in which we pollute the earth, or yet another animal species that we have exterminated is painful, but imparts on the current environmental problems a sense of magnitude that a mere polemic cannot give. It also puts to rest any thought of solving these problems through legislation or environmental activism. While these actions (suggested by Lester Brown in Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, among other sources) are probably necessary to stem the tide of destruction, they cannot be sufficient because they don't address the fundamental factors that have given rise to these problems in the first place - our very outlook on the world and the way it causes us to treat it and each other.

I cannot recommend this book as a pleasant reading experience, but I unreservedly recommend it as an eye-opening one. It comes at a high price in the reader's labour and nerves, but the clarity of vision with which it illuminates our environmental crisis is well worth it.

(From the author of A Glimpse of Another World and Living Deliberately)