Peace and Environment News* May 1995
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Peace and Environment News * May 1995 |
A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations
By Clive Ponting
Penguin Books, New York, 1991
Available at Octopus Books for $15.99
Reviewed by Mike Kaulbars
Overall I would have to say that A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations is must reading for anyone seeking an overall understanding of the historical and present relationship between human society and the natural world. Not only does it cover its focus well, but it can also serve as an excellent introduction to basic knowledge about geological history and ecology. The book does have limitations which I will discuss, but on the whole it is the best in this genre that I have seen.
I think the book should be properly titled "Environmental History of Humankind," because that is essentially what it is about. The second chapter gives us a basic introduction to the first 4 1/2 billion years of the earth's history, but thereafter the story is about humans and civilizations. Ponting's narrative roams all over the world from Easter Island to Europe, examining the collapse of societies from Sumeria to Meso-America. Whether Babylon, Rome, or the Maya, the pattern remains consistent. Civilizations rise in regions of abundant resources, overexploit them and despoil the land, and collapse. "Civilization" in one form or another has persisted only by shifting to another resource-rich region and repeating the pattern. Time and again areas such as the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates, or Carthage, the bread basket of Rome, are reduced to the stoney wastelands that are modern Iraq and Libya. This insight is not new; a nineteenth century French aristocrat noted that "Forests precede civilization; deserts follow it." But Ponting lays it out with a compelling thoroughness.
That being said, I have to say that I was definitely disappointed by the lack of conclusions that Ponting was willing to draw. For example, there is no social or class analysis even though the nature of his discussion of the historical human condition virtually begs it. He notes correctly that pre-agricultural societies had little hierarchical power structure, worked minimally and valued their leisure time highly. With the rise of agriculture we find the emergence of an affluent elite, greater food production, and, paradoxically, for most of humanity, a life of hard work, grinding poverty, and often insufficient nutrition.
Ponting does not address the obvious question of why greater food production should lead to less food for most people. Even though his work is about the collapse of cultures and civilizations, he treats them as homogeneous and never really asks why the cultures overexploit their environment or whether societies can be restructured to avoid it. The information he presents suggests strongly that the problem is massive overconsumption by the affluent elite (e.g. those of us in the industrialized North), which simultaneously overstresses the environment and forces most of humanity to live in conditions of brutal poverty.
Ponting does talk about the brutal colonization and exploitation of the Third World, and while he mentions obliquely that economic imperialism remains the status quo, he does not spell out exactly what we are doing in terms of the human suffering it causes, the venal reasons it is done for, and the inevitable result it will have. An obvious but missing discussion is that, if civilization has persisted by moving to regions that have not been ecologically devastated, what is the prognosis for the future given that we are devastating the earth on a global scale?
The lack of analysis of the root causes of overconsumption means that Ponting has little to offer in terms of possible solutions. He does note that the rise of entire affluent cultures, made possible by technology and economic systems that allow us to exploit remote cultures, has resulted in a "super-elite" whose levels of consumption surpass anything that could have been imagined even two hundred years ago. He suggests that this consumption serves no other function than to prove that the elite are immensely wealthy, but he does not question the right of the elite to consume, nor does he come to the obvious conclusion that if we wish to survive at all, then overconsumption by the elite must be stopped.
Particularly disappointing are Ponting's glowingly optimistic statements about the future. Having thoroughly documented that cultures with far more limited levels of consumption than our own have inevitably depleted the environment and collapsed as a result, he actually says "...it is clearly far too soon to judge whether modern industrialized societies...are ecologically sustainable." Within the context of the rest of the book this statement is utterly absurd.
This book is definitely worth reading, but readers will have to draw their own conclusions about what the book has to teach us because the author has failed to state the obvious.
Converted June 20, 2000 - Lg
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