A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great CivilizationsLike Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel, Clive Ponting's book studies the relationship between the environment and human history. It examines world civilisations from Sumeria to ancient Egypt, from Easter Island to the Roman Empire and it argues that human beings have repeatedly built societies that have grown and prospered by exploiting the Earth's resources, only to expand to the point where those resources could no longer sustain the societies' populations and cause subsequent collapse. This new edition of Clive Ponting's international bestseller has been revised, expanded and updated. It provides not only a compelling story of how we have damaged the environment for thousands of years but also an up-to-the-minute assessment of the crisis facing the world today - and the problems that have to be addressed in the search for solutions. |
Contents
The Lessons of Easter Island | 1 |
The Foundations of History | 8 |
Ninetynine per cent of Human History | 17 |
Copyright | |
16 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
A New Green History Of The World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great ... Clive Ponting No preview available - 2011 |
A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great ... Clive Ponting No preview available - 2007 |