A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations Paperback – December 18, 2007

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 )

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?

This is history on the grand scale - going back to the big idea and changing the way we look at the world. This is a refreshing re-telling of history - taking away the Whig legacy of history as progress and taking instead the perspective of what we have done to exploit the world, and of our capacity to drive civilisations to collapse."From one perspective, this invention of new techniques [clothing, housing, writing], the use of more complicated production processes and the use of more resources, can be viewed as progress - the increasing ability of human societies to modify the environment and utilise its resources in order to meet their growing needs. From an ecological perspective this process has a very different interpretation. Human history can be seen as a succession of ever more complex and environmentally damaging way of meeting the same basic human needs. There may not have been any alternative given the rise in human numbers and the impact of new technology but that does not alter the fact of the greater amount of environmental damage involved in all these processes."It is extraordinary the sheer scale of what we as a species have done over a few millennia and in particular over the last 200 years:"Ecological constraints were broken by the development of agriculture.. the last 10,000 years of history have been shaped by an agriculture-based boom that has sustained a rise in numbers from four million to over six billion."Ponting characterises most of human history as constrained by a shortage of access to energy, desperate for animal and human power, with human power often coming cheaper than draft animals: "Humans are more efficient energy converters than animals."Then came the great transition, to energy plenty, with all its consequences for belching carbon into the atmosphere:"Until the early nineteenth century renewable resources - human, animal, water, wind - provided nearly all the world's energy. Now over 85% comes from non-renewable fossil fuels.. the transition to fossil fuels has been accompanied by a spectacular rise in energy consumption."We are reminded how close society has often been to the vision of Malthus - constantly driving itself to the edge of population collapse:"The endemic level of inadequate diet and malnutrition for most of the people in the world was frequently turned into disaster by the outbreak of famine..In China in the two thousand years between 108 BCE and 1910 there were 1,828 years (over 90% of the total) in which famines involved at least one province in the country. In France between 970 and 1100 there were 60 years of famine at a time of expanding agricultural output..."He points out that other civilisations must have thought they were sustainable, but over time collapsed:..."irrigation can badly degrade the land and lead to waterlogging and salinisation as the early societies in Sumer discovered over four thousand years ago. These effects are now found in half of the irrigated land in Syria and Iraq, a quarter of the irrigated land in the US and four fifths of the irrigated area in the Punjab."We are reminded of the constant struggle to get beyond subsistence, bringing in energy and effort from the earth, of the practical limits to city and civilisation growth throughout much of human history:"Until the early nineteenth century nowhere in the world could more than about ten per cent of the population be employed in non agricultural activities because agricultural production was so low."He brings you back to the norms of disease and death throughout most of human history - and the potential for a return to that as disease becomes resistant to antibiotics. The past is piled high in sewage and you can smell the stench from his stories (although some cities in India and China did it better).We are reminded of the limits of agricultural efficiency and increased energy efficiency in a world of population growth, increasing inequality, and a constant drive to grow to maintain employment, electability and pursue western lifestyles:" so-called primitive agricultural systems are also highly energy-efficient producing about twenty times the energy they use. At best, modern cereal farming produces only about twice as much energy as it consumes in the form of fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides and machinery. Modern agriculture is also becoming less energy-efficient....Meat production in the industrialised world now consumes between two and three times the energy it produces...add the energy cost of processing and distributing food. This takes about three times as much energy as producing the food itself."It is very hard to believe, by the end of the book, that Western lifestyles are anything but a dangerous, critically risky theft of the earth's resources.Clive Ponting has a Victorian love of statistics in action. His is almost an hommage to Chadwick:"In 1853 when the Lambeth Water Company finally moved its source of water supply further upstream away from the most polluted area, the death rate in the area it supplied rapidly fell from 130 per thousand to 37 per thousand."In a book aiming at such an authoritative sweep of history it seems a major failing that there are no footnotes - only a rather limited and dated reading list - and one is left wondering where some fascinating statistics come from:The unsustainable dynamic of inequality - "The US contains about 5% of the world's population yet it consumes every year about 40% of the resources used in the world."Growth faster than the world has ever before seen - "The world in the twentieth century.. World population x3.8..World industrial output x35 ...World energy use x12.5 ...World water use x9 ...World fertiliser use x342"The evils of the car (and the importance of recycling your old car) - "Car production now consumes more resources than any other industry. It uses about 20% of world steel production, 35% of the zinc, 50% of the lead, 60% of all natural rubber and 10% of world aluminium production. In addition over a third of the world's oil consumption is accounted for by vehicles."Climate change already clearly observable over the twentieth century - "Warmer air is able to hold more water vapour and rainfall has increased by just under 1% a decade in the mid to high latitudes of the northern hemisphere. The number of heavy storms has also increased - by about 4% over the twentieth century.""Around Britain small marine animals and seaweeds have on average moved 150 km north in the last fifty years." I longed for the references, even online, even if they were as long as the book itself.But overall, I found myself convinced by his arguments, as he drew to a close in this updated 2007 version building on the IPCC report on climate change - change is happening faster than it ever did in the past, and there is no reason to believe we can keep up. The hidden message is that in an unequal way, across the world, we are heading for population crisis and collapse, as the huge build up of population growth, the limits of energy intensive farming and higher temperatures well above the `safe' two degrees coincide. Even if in our lifetimes we appear to cope, the change built up in the environment, from accumulated greenhouse gases, and the irreversibility of much change over a century or more, will result in mass human misery. There is no reason to believe, in the face of the evidence, that our governments and multinationals will be able to prevent it.He rejects the two degrees centigrade rise talk of world governments."In its Energy Outlook for 2006 the International Energy Agency forecast that the most likely scenario was a 53% increase in world energy use by 2030 and that fossil fuels would make up over 80% of that increase...carbon dioxide concentrations... would rise to...two or three times above pre-industrial levels... continued growth in the world economy.. would imply an average temperature rise of at least 5 degrees C but perhaps twice that in high latitudes."He reminds us that increased energy efficiency is not really the solution if it simply powers economic growth."Many societies in the past believed that they had a sustainable way of life only to find some time later that this was not the case. By the time they had to face the crisis, they were unable to make the social, economic and political changes necessary for survival."

A (New) Green History of the World is a well-researched publication which is interesting to read and of high quality. It is a very complex work, which will offer every reader the possibility to learn something new. At times, the detailed historical accounts are surprising or shocking and they fit together to a coherent overall picture of human history from an environmental perspective. The book contains an overwhelming amount of information but it still remains relatively easy to read, since its tone is not too academic and the sentences are not too complicated. The entire historical account implicitly calls for action, and provides comprehensive background information on a currently pressing subject, substantial for the long-term survival of our society. Overall, A (New) Green History of the World excels with its innovative approach and a logical argument, and is therefore a highly recommendable book to read.

I have used this in university courses for several years - it is an impressive piece of research covering an enormous geographical and chronological range. It is intense and rewarding reading. I dread the day it goes out of print! Very highly recommended.

Dear Mr Ponting, Thank you for all your work in writing this book. It must have taken years of research to even begin it. I recommend this book to everyone I know who is interested in what has happened to our world and what is happening now. It is a dense and very well-structured book, which took me two months to read - mainly because nearly every paragraph I was looking up yet another item in Wikipedia.Now that I have finished the book, I will start it again. I have never done that with any other book in my life. The reason is that the density of the material needs time for people unfamiliar with ecology to even begin to appreciate.I recommend this book to anyone who is serious enough in wanting to find out about the living facts of what we have done and what we are doing to our world.Thank you, again, Mr Ponting, for this. I hope you enjoy a long and happy retirement in your olive groves.

Understanding what is going on on the planet right now canot be done without looking at ecological developments and resource depletion. This books show that other civilisations have been trought htis before (altough never on the global scale as this time aroung). Important lessons can be learned about the (im)possebilities of policy respons and the options of smaller groups who see the problems ahead of time.