A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations. - book reviews

Sierra, Nov-Dec, 1992 by Kathleen Courrier

A Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations by Clive Ponting

St. Martin's Press; $24.95

All has not gone well for our species since we turned from hunting and gathering to agriculture about 10,000 years ago. As British historian Clive Ponting points out, we have continually pushed our luck by expanding our numbers, thus pressing against the limits of the food supply. Yet we persist in producing still more offspring requiring more and more nourishment.

For Ponting, history turns largely on the supply and distribution of food. In great (at times excessive) detail he examines how food shortages have subverted many ancient civilizations; the collapse of Rome, he argues, came about partly because its large population and far-flung armies became too hard to feed. Later, European colonial powers siphoned natural resources from less-developed nations and pressed otherwise self-reliant farmers into servitude on plantations, usually to grow export crops. For conquered nations struggling to slake their colonial masters' desires, the results were often disastrous.

Ponting's work shows that no nation is permanently immune to cycles of feast and famine. When so many civilizations have collapsed, who's to say ours won't follow? The question is how far we can extend ourselves before, inevitably, we must contract.