In this impressive tour de force, Sunil Amrith takes us from what he sees as the beginning of the serious exploitation of the environment by humans up to the present day and into the future. In so doing, he charts the many ways that humans have used the environment and in so doing, damaged it.
History
Starting with the agricultural innovations of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, Amrith takes us on a journey through environmental history and the last 500 years in particular. He shows us how human greed has led to the increasing exploitation of Earth and how the capitalist economy has driven the search for more and more energy, particularly fossil fuels.
Amrith has an eye for detail and the ability to see how different events in many parts of the world, from Mongolia to Nigeria, from Baku to the United States, have had a cumulative effect in damaging the earth and the atmosphere that we depend upon. He also consistently makes the point that the benefits of the exploitation of the land on which we depend, have been enjoyed by some people a lot more than others.
We see a comprehensive list of so many of the places where the environment has been decimated for the short-tern benefit of humanity, while we also see the damage caused by humans with the folly of war and conflict.
We also see how indigenous people have been made to pay for their ownership of the land, which could make some men so wealthy, including the Native American peoples, while indigenous people in the Amazon and elsewhere are still paying a high price for the rampant human desire for more and more wealth, at the expense of the environment. The link between the acquisition of energy and other resources and the injustice done to those with less power is made clear.
Renewable energy
Amrith supports the move to renewable energy sources, but at the same time issues a warning: “renewable energy presents a promising, but not uncomplicated path to slowing down the pace of planetary warming. Renewables will reduce greenhouse gas emissions but might do so by deepening human inequality and harming biodiversity. To generate as much electricity as a 1-gigawatt fossil-fuelled power station, an array of photovoltaic solar panels neds about 80 square kilometres of land. In India sprawling solar parks have seized land from small farmers and pastoralists in a manner that is uncomfortably reminiscent of the way large dams displaced millions in the twentieth century.”
Self-destructive folly
The book raises one fundamental and quite possibly existentialist question for humanity: has all the progress since the industrial revolution been worth it? This is a question, which we clearly must continue to struggle with as we move on through the 21st century and the downside of all our industrial and technological progress becomes ever more apparent.
Clearly some have benefitted far more from that progress than others, as Amrith points out:
“More and more people are challenging the self-destructive folly that captured the imagination of the powerful and privileged for two hundred years and which maintains a chokehold on our collective right to breathe – the idea that human ambition could simply disregard the health of rivers, the viability of forests and the suffering of animals”.
This is a book for its time. Humanity is at a crossroads, and we need to think both collectively and very carefully about where we go from here. On the one hand millions of people have benefitted from the industrial and technological revolutions of the last 250 years and which largely began here in Northeast England. On the other hand, continuing with business as usual will make large areas of the earth uninhabitable before the end of this century and those who will suffer and indeed are already beginning to suffer the most, will be those who have done least to cause climate change.
We need a just transition, both here in the North East and across the world, to a low carbon or even carbon-free economy, with green energy in the hands of the people who use it and dependent on well-paid, worthwhile work to produce it. Sadly, this book reminds us of just what a break from the past and what a challenge, achieving such a transition will be. We are also left to reflect on the dire consequences of not following the path to a just transition.
Amrith’s book is a reminder, not only of what has happened before, but also of the stark choices we face – and that if business as usual continues, then while a few may continue to benefit, as has happened in the past a large number of people and other forms of life will suffer and as has happened so many times before, it will be the poor and marginalised who will suffer the most.
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