I had a great deal of trouble finishing this book. It was just plain tedious.

This book could have been interesting and so much better, but I found it boring and outdated. I didn't learn much new "stuff", which is the whole point of reading books like this.

The first third of the book is incredibly boring and tedious (I put the book down to read 5 other books before picking it up again and forcing myself to finish it). The rest gets a bit better, but not much.

The author selects the most common, well-known examples (boring, old information) for his chapters - it would have been nice to read about something else besides the usual whales and passenger pigeons.

Major gripe: The author doesn't state his references properly so I have no idea where he gets his numbers/ statistics and some of his information from. There is a "Guide to Further Reading" but that doesn't really help very much. This is a science book! I expect proper references. I also expect new references as well as old references. Most of the "Further Reading" section lists books written in the 1980s. All the data provided in this book doesn't go further than 2000, and this is supposed to be an updated (2007) edition of the book.


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A good account of the progression from early agriculture to our current environmental situation. In short, gathering and hunting was good, agriculture very bad for the environment. Killing, clearing, polluting,degrading has been going on for a few millennium. ( )

I liked this one, and I hated it.

I think he does an excellent job pointing out the environment and social problems that have been characteristic of human civilizations. In particular I applaud him for standing his ground and not producing a ridiculous "happy chapter" suggesting that energy efficiency and green consumerism will save the day.

What I hated (most) about this book is that he doesn't seem to realize that he is critiquing civilization. Rather he tries to implicate the entire human race, and often comes across as very absurd in doing so. For instance he tells us that pollution has been a problem in all human societies, and goes on to mention how many stone tools were left in the wake of one Paleolithic site. Excuse me, Clive, but how do stone tools pollute the environment, any more than would, say, stone rocks? He also tells a very doubtful story of human origins to fit his idea of humans' natural tendency to destroy the environment, including concurrence with the Pleistocene Overkill hypothesis and a belief in the Bering land bridge, both seen as doubtful by those archaeologists informed in these area of knowledge. ( )

Clive Ponting tackles the challenge of telling world history through the lens of environmentalism. The book is informative and interesting, but I found it dry and clinical, with an overemphasis on numbers and percentages.

The main thesis of the book is that there were two great transformations in human society (the invention of agriculture and then the predominant use of non-renewable resources and fossil fuels to obtain our energy needs) that have had huge impacts on the environmental degradation of our planet.

In the case of agriculture, the use of land for crops led to deforestation, the creation of highly unusable land after too much irrigation led to massive salinization of the soil, and disease as people lived in close quarters with domesticated animals. This also led to a rapid increase in population, urbanization, colonialism, extinction and homogenization of plant and animals, and, led to society as we know it today.

The second transformation is much more obvious to those of us living in twenty-first century. We are aware of the environmental and social impacts of relying on non-renewable resources for our energy. (Although I did find it interesting, and totally obvious in retrospect, that even when humans were using renewable resources for fuel, they used them in highly non-renewable ways.)

I think the most interesting part of this book was just learning that there never was any sort of golden age in history where there was no pollution, environmental damage being wrought by humans, corruption in huge corporations, etc. Since the dawn of agriculture, humans have pretty much been doing all they can to exploit the planet for maximum gain (although with relatively good intentions - namely to feed, clothe and shelter people). These days we see it in the unstoppable growth of multinational corporations and the ridiculous amounts of profits they obtain from exploiting the resources of the planet.

The author also goes into (briefly) the huge impacts of colonialism and how the impacts are still a huge part of our planet these days in terms of which countries are developed, and which segments of the population are rich and poor. I find it sickening how little regard humans have had for other populations as early as the rise of the first societies.

At the end of the book, the author mostly just summarizes the main points he made throughout without offering any call to action as most environmental books do. He just states, quite obviously, that future prospects are bleak if we continue to consume as much (although we will most likely keep consuming more) as we do today. A rather bleak outlook, but realistic nonetheless. He holds little hope that there will be any sort of systemic change, as most societies in world history never changed their ways, and inevitably declined as a result. ( )

Clive Ponting: A green history of the world: 1993: Eerste druk 1991: 407 blz: Penguin

Paaseiland is een van de meest afgelegen en onbewoonde gebieden op Aarde. Waarschijnlijk is het rond 500 nChr gekoloniseerd door een groep van maximaal 25 Polynesiërs. Langzaam groeide de bevolking tot zo'n 7000 mensen. Paaseiland is bekend om de grote stenen beelden die er staan. Om die te maken was een inventieve maatschappijstructuur nodig. Voor het verplaatsen van de stenen beelden was echter veel hout nodig en zo raakte het eiland ontbost waardoor de bestaansmogelijkheden van het eiland uitgeput raakten. Toen de Nederlandse admiraal Roggeveen op Paaszondag 1722 het eiland ontdekte trof hij een ontregelde samenleving aan waarin continue oorlog heerste.
Paaseiland is maar een van de vele voorbeelden van ecologische catastrofes die in dit boek besproken worden. Er wordt ook een groot vraagteken gezet bij de huidige Westerse manier van landbouw. Het boek is prettig leesbaar, onderhoudend en geeft veel stof tot nadenken.

Uitgelezen: woensdag 25 december 2002, Waardering: *** ( )