Book Review

Introduction

In Part 1 of A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations, Clive Ponting tells us that since the fall of the Soviet Union “billions of tons of carbon dioxide have been put into the atmosphere and the threat of global warming is even more starkly apparent.” “World industrial output and levels of consumption have continued to rise at unprecedented rates. There can be no doubt that global warming is the greatest single threat that the world now faces.” “By the time that the effects of global warming become fully apparent, and that may be very soon, it will be too late to take action to avoid disaster.” “Easter Island is a striking example of the dependence of human societies on their environment and of the consequences of irreversibly damaging that environment.” “By 1600 the island was almost completely deforested and statue erection was brought to a halt, leaving many stranded at the quarry. The deforestation of the island was not only the death knell for the elaborate social and ceremonial life, it also had other drastic effects on the everyday life of the population.” “They resorted to stone shelters dug into the hillside or flimsy reed huts. Canoes could no longer be built and only reed boats incapable of long voyages could be made. Fishing was more difficult because nets had previously been made from the paper mulberry tree and that was no longer available.” “Increased exposure caused soil erosion and the leaching out of essential nutrients. As a result crop yields declined. It became impossible to support 7,000 people on this diminishing resource base and numbers fell rapidly.” “Without trees and so without canoes, the islanders were trapped in their remote home, unable to escape the consequences of their self-inflicted environmental collapse.” “When the environment was ruined by the pressure, the society very quickly collapsed with it, leading to a state of near barbarism.” “The fate of Easter Island has wider implications. Like Easter Island the earth has only limited resources to support human society and all its demands.” “Like the islanders, the human population of the earth has no practical means of escape.” “For the last 2 million years humans have succeeded in obtaining more food and extracting more resources on which to sustain increasing numbers of people and increasingly complex and technologically advanced societies.” “But have they been any more successful than the islanders in finding a way of life that does not fatally deplete the resources that are available to them and irreversibly damage their life support system?”

 

A NEW GREEN HISTORY OF THE WORLD

THE ENVIRONMENT AND THE COLLAPSE OF GREAT CIVILISATIONS

CLIVE PONTING

VINTAGE BOOKS              2007

PART 1

Preface

• The first edition of this book was published in 1991. Over the last 16 years much has changed in the world – the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Cold War has been replaced by the problems posed by the global dominance of the United States and the threat of terrorism.
• Much has also changed in the environment, some for the better but many for the worse.
• More than a billion extra people live on the earth than when the first edition of this book was written. Billions of tons of carbon dioxide have been put into the atmosphere and the threat of global warming is even more starkly apparent.
• The destruction of the rainforests and other habitats has continued at an increasing pace.
• At the end of the first edition I tried to strike a balance between pessimism and optimism when I wrote: ‘Past human actions have left contemporary societies with an almost insuperably difficult set of problems to solve.’ In the last 16 years the balance was clearly tipped in favour of pessimism.
• How well has the world’s leadership faced up to environmental problems over the last decade and a half? World industrial output and levels of consumption have continued to rise at unprecedented rates. There can be no doubt that global warming is the greatest single threat that the world now faces.
• Over the last few years scientists have become increasingly concerned that the world’s climate is about to reach a point where dramatic changes may happen very quickly and that these changes will be irreversible and bring in their wake major social and economic disruption.
• By the time that the effects of global warming become fully apparent, and that may be very soon, it will be too late to take action to avoid disaster.
• The world is now seeing the conjunction of a number of trends that emerged over the last 2 centuries, all of which are likely to lead to immense environmental problems in the next few years.
• This book tries to show just how deep-rooted these trends are in the way human societies have evolved.

 

Chapter 1: The Lessons of Easter Island

• Easter Island is one of the most remote inhabited places on earth.
• What amazed and intrigued the first European visitors was the evidence, amongst all the squalor and barbarism, of a once flourishing and advanced society.
• Easter Island is a striking example of the dependence of human societies on their environment and of the consequences of irreversibly damaging that environment.
• It is the story of a people who, starting from an extremely limited resource base, constructed one of the most advanced societies in the world for the technology they had available.
• However, the demands placed on the environment of the islands by this development were immense. When it could no longer withstand the pressure, the society that had been painfully built up over the previous thousand years fell with it.
• Crop production took very little effort and there was plenty of free time and labour which the clan chiefs could use for ceremonial activities.  The result was the creation of the most advanced of all the Polynesian societies and one of the most complex in the world for its limited resource base.
• The Easter Islanders’ solution to the problem of transport provides the key to the subsequent fate of their whole society. Lacking any draught animals they had to rely on human power to drag the statues across the island using tree trunks as rollers.
• Prodigious quantities of timber would have been required and in increasing amounts as the competition between the clans to erect statues grew.
• By 1600 the island was almost completely deforested and statue erection was brought to a halt, leaving many stranded at the quarry.
• The deforestation of the island was not only the death knell for the elaborate social and ceremonial life, it also had other drastic effects on the everyday life of the population.
• They resorted to stone shelters dug into the hillside or flimsy reed huts. Canoes could no longer be built and only reed boats incapable of long voyages could be made.
• Fishing was more difficult because nets had previously been made from the paper mulberry tree and that was no longer available.
• Increased exposure caused soil erosion and the leaching out of essential nutrients. As a result crop yields declined.
• It became impossible to support 7,000 people on this diminishing resource base and numbers fell rapidly.
• Without trees and so without canoes, the islanders were trapped in their remote home, unable to escape the consequences of their self-inflicted environmental collapse.
• There were increasing conflicts over diminishing resources, resulting in a state of almost permanent warfare. Slavery became common and as the amount of protein available fell the population turned to cannibalism.
• When the environment was ruined by the pressure, the society very quickly collapsed with it, leading to a state of near barbarism.
• The fate of Easter Island has wider implications. Like Easter Island the earth has only limited resources to support human society and all its demands.
• Like the islanders, the human population of the earth has no practical means of escape.
• For the last 2 million years humans have succeeded in obtaining more food and extracting more resources on which to sustain increasing numbers of people and increasingly complex and technologically advanced societies.
• But have they been any more successful than the islanders in finding a way of life that does not fatally deplete the resources that are available to them and irreversibly damage their life support system?

 

Chapter 2: The Foundations of History

• Research in a wide variety of disciplines is increasingly making it clear that life on earth and all human societies depend on the maintenance of a number of delicate balances within and between a whole series of complex processes.
• Human history has been affected by the action of large-scale geological and astronomical forces over long periods of time, creating continental drift, volcanic eruptions, and earth quakes.
• The evolution of animals in different parts of the world has also had major effects on human history, influencing agriculture and transport.
• Climate has influenced crop yields, the ability of humans to settle parts of the globe, and the way plants and animals are distributed.
• The ice ages, which have dominated the world’s climate for the last 2½ million years, depend upon the distribution of land masses in the northern hemisphere.
• Apart from the steadily increasing energy output of the sun and the levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere, the major factor determining climate is a series of astronomical cycles affecting the earth and its orbit around the sun.
• Over a period of 90,000 – 100,000 years the earth’s orbit varies from being nearly circular to more elliptical. The 2^nd cycle, the timing of the earth’s closest approach to the sun, is completed every 21,000 years. The 3^rd cycle affects the tilt of the earth, which varies over a period of about 40,000 years.
• It is the combination of the three long-term cycles that largely determines the earth’s changing climate.
• The interglacial periods have normally been short. The warmest interglacial phase was about 120,000 years ago.
• Very little of the sun’s energy is converted into matter. There is no way in which this efficiency can be improved since it depends on the amount of light falling on the earth, the laws of physics and the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• It takes thousands of years to move from bare rock through lichens and mosses to ferns, plants and eventually trees – provided there is no human interference.
• This development of an ecosystem has occurred countless times during the earth’s history.
• The different types of ecosystem depend to a large extent on the temperature and level of rainfall. The productivity of the different ecosystems varies greatly.
• The most productive of all terrestrial systems are the tropical forests covering about 6% of the world’s land surface, producing about 40% of all terrestrial primary plant production and containing about half of all the plants and animals on earth.
• Soil is the product of an ecosystem, built up over thousands of years. Fertility is built up and maintained as an active process through the interaction of plant cover, the existing soil, the work of decomposers and other environmental factors such as rainfall and temperature.
• Once the trees and plants of an ecosystem are destroyed or badly damaged then the underlying soil is very quickly subjected to severe strain and can easily be destroyed or eroded away by the wind and rain, leaving only a degraded remnant.
• All parts of an ecosystem are interconnected through a complex set of self-regulating cycles, feedback loops and linkages between different parts of the food chain. If one species of animal is wiped out, there will be ramifications up and down the food chain.
• The destruction of the primary producers will constitute an attack on the base of the food chain and it will have disastrous effects on all parts of the chain.
• Just as the plants and animals in an ecosystem are parts of a greater whole, the ecosystems themselves are part of a greater whole – the earth itself.
• For all practical purposes the earth is a closed system. Sunlight gets in but nothing gets out. All waste products must go somewhere. This fact, combined with the limited resources available to all living things, means that the recycling of the materials necessary for life is an essential function of all ecosystems.
• Problems can arise when artificial wastes are ‘disposed of’ by dumping at sea or discharging into the air, remaining as pollutants somewhere in the system.
• In their relationship to the ecosystem, two factors distinguish humans from all other animals – they are the only species capable of endangering and even destroying the ecosystems on which they depend for their existence; and they are the only species to have spread to every terrestrial ecosystem and then dominated them.

The most important task in all human history has been to find a way of extracting from the different ecosystems enough resources for maintaining life – food, clothing, shelter, energy and other goods. Inevitably this has meant intervening in natural ecosystems. The problem for human societies has been to balance their various demands against the ability of the ecosystems to withstand the resulting pressures.

 

Chapter 3: Ninety-Nine Per Cent of Human History