Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World

by John Robert McNeill

Book Overview

The history of the twentieth century is most often told through its world wars, the rise and fall of communism, or its economic upheavals. In his startling book, J. R. McNeill gives us our first general account of what may prove to be the most significant dimension of the twentieth century: its environmental history. To a degree unprecedented in human history, we have refashioned the earth's air, water, and soil, and the biosphere of which we are...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393321835
• ISBN13: 9780393321838
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Of rats, sharks, and history

Most science writing nowadays must be interdisciplinary; able to use empirical evidence and relevant concepts, theories, and conclusions from vastly different fields of enquiry. Would you expect the same of a history book? Although this book's publishing category is science/environment it really should be history. The author says as much. This is "a history of - and for - environmentally tumultuous times". And that history is broad. From the ancient days when the book of Ecclesiastes was written to our modern era of Nobel Prize winning physicists, there has been a remarkable common conception of our planet as immutable and infinite. In contrast to the biblical gentleman who said there was nothing new under the sun, or physicist Robert Millikan who saw Earth's vastness as effectively shielding it from real harm from humanity, J R McNeill sees SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN and it's simply that "the place of humankind within the natural world is not what it was." Can we link man's history with that of the natural or biological world? Many have tried from both sides of the equation. Great historians and thinkers like Kant, Marx and Pierre Tielhard de Chardin have seen a direction and inevitability about history while Berlin and Popper spoke eloquently against historicism. This book doesn't go there nor does it tackle the attempt by some evolutionary biologists to explain all we see in life as determined at the genetic level. Great scientists from Einstein forward have sought some unifying or final theory and it's still going on. Today sociobiologists, quantum physicists and game theorists say they have the answers. What McNeill contributes to this is his view that "in recent millennia, cultural evolution has shaped human affairs more than biological evolution has. Societies...unconsciously pursue survival strategies of adaptability or of supreme adaptation." The entire book is a brilliant exposition on this point. How mankind, like the rat, was a creature that used adaptability to select for fitness for exploitation of new niches created when short term environmental shocks killed off competition. I say "was" because McNeill convincingly argues that in the 20th century we have tended more towards the strategy of supreme adaptation. Best typified by the shark this is fine-tuned specialization that "is rewarded by continuous success only so long as governing conditions stay the same." The stability required for continued success in this system is based on "stable climate, cheap energy and water, and rapid population and economic growth". Through chapters such as "The Atmosphere: Urban History", "The Hydrosphere: Depletions, Dams and Diversions", "More People, Bigger Cities" and "Fuels, Tools and Economics" he uses tables and data and balanced and thoughtful reasoning to show that these conditions are neither static nor stable, and he effectively makes his pont. His point is not that of a Cassandra warning of an impending environmental apocalypse but s

Good

This is an interesting book. A good deal of history is concerned with the anecdotal recounting of the exploits of a small number of people. This book is part of the "new idea of history". That is the use of large scale quantitative material to look at larger issues. Prior to 1800 most civilizations in the world depended on muscle power to produce wealth. Societies were generally similar with small elite's dependent on others to produce their wealth. After 1800 the world started to change as energy was used by man to produce wealth. This has continued to change the globe in ways that could never have been anticipated. The world has seen enormous increases in population. Places such as Java had in 1800 populations of around 10 million. The current figure is some 127 million. These increases have occurred throughout the world with patterns of agriculture changing and in Western Countries people living in cities. The book divides the history of the environment into a number of chapters which focus on specific topics. The effect on the water supply of increased irrigation and pollution. There is a chapter on air pollution and how governments have responded to it. The book is reasonably no polemical in an area which can become highly emotive. The affect of some environmental changes such as those to the ozone layer however can have extremely long lasting effects. The current changes to reduce fluro carbons will probably take about 87 years before the ozone levels will return to normal. All in all this book is worth a read. It is interesting as it shows how government in richer countries has been responsive to the threat to the environment but non democratic countries especially in poorer areas will continue to contribute to the environmental problems of the world.

A unique history

In Something New Under the Sun, J.R. McNeill reconstructs the environmental history of the world over the past hundred years. His central theme is that the twentieth century was the first time in history when humanity could determine the health and success of every single species and ecosystem on Earth. He is equally interested in how and why humanity altered global ecology and the accidental byproducts of those actions. McNeil contends that we are gambling that we can sustain our fossil-fuel based civilization, which is ecologically destructive and dependent on the maintenance of a specific set of environmental conditions. McNeill illustrates this point by dividing all animals into two categories: rats (animals that adapt to changing environments) and sharks (animals that adapt to existing circumstances). He contends that many species survived for millennia using shark-like strategies, providing there was no ecological change. While McNeill observes that humanity has succeeded in large part by pursuing rat-like evolutionary strategies, he postulates that humanity's adoption of more shark-like development strategies in the twentieth century may be dangerous in the long run, given that these same strategies can produce rapid ecological change. Despite these clear dangers, McNeill argues that shark-like development policies were rational given the political, economic and social conditions in the twentieth century. In particular, he demonstrates that this form of development was conducive to innovations and large-scale projects that produced immediate material and environmental benefits as well as unexpected, less immediately visible side effects. The tension produced by a tradeoff between improving the standard of living and environmental change is critical to McNeill's vision and appears repeatedly throughout the book. He limns this tradeoff clearly in his discussion of the transition from an economy dependent on horses/trains and coal/wood to one that uses petroleum and the automobile. (He labels this invention "a strong contender for the most socially and environmentally consequential technology of the twentieth century.") According to McNeill, the coal/wood and horse/train economy depleted trees rapidly and polluted the air and streets of cities with coal exhaust and dung. The new system, by contrast, did not threaten forests, produced cleaner air and did not clog the streets with animal waste. At the same, he shows that extracting petroleum decimated whole ecosystems and that the burning of petroleum produced harmful greenhouse gasses. Even within these systems, McNeill notes, there were winners and losers: in the Ruhr Valley unionized workers accepted pollution at high levels if it preserved their jobs, while housewives and farmers pushed to end pollution. McNeill's strongest chapters deal with the environmental, social and material changes resulting from the advances in agriculture and public health in the twentieth century. T

Eminently Readable analysis of enviromental concerns

For a throughly researched, densly written , book of facts to be readable is almost a contradiction. Yet this is exactly what J.R. McNeill has accomplished. He is a Historian, most interested in change, objective in his assesment of those changes (Who and What benefits, Who and What doesn't), anthropocentric(a viewpoint too often missing in environmental studies), and broad-minded concerning possible approaches to problems (the shark has done very well for a very long time). What makes this such an important book aside from its readability and penetrating analysis, is perspective. J.R. McNeill considers history without consideration of the life-support system of Earth or ecology that neglects social forces, incomplete and capable of leading to dangerous conclusions. Further, "Both history and ecology are, as fields of knowledge go, supremely integrative. They merely need to integrate with one another."Having grown up in Pittsburgh, Pa., I can attest to the author's history of Pittsburgh and to his grasp of the complexity of problems there (for instance: Andrew Carnegie found the level of pollution intolerable, later some unions fought smoke-control). In today's world, no matter where we live or what work we do,environmental issues will arise.This book by elucidating the processes and trends that underly today's world, gives us a foundation on which to base our opinions and choices, working toward the day when we , in the author's words, "Make our own luck, rather than trusting to luck..."

The Narrow Road to a Sustainable Future.

In 1970 I wanted to start a Ph.D on essentially this subject and I was told it was unresearchable because there was too little primary data. In retrospect amusing given what was happening all around us then. McNeill does a tremendous unemotional (though he is profoundly emotional in impact ... his understated nuances ... the staggering impact of his narrative cumulatively sinks in) job of describing the unfolding catastrophe. Yet he never gives rise to pessimism or fatalism. He describes by implication the narrow road to the sustainable future and his understanding of the political pressures for growth start many new thoughts running. I particularly like seeing economic growth as one more ism...materialism or globalism or whatever....that that distorts our ability to see clearly what we are doing. An extremely analytical but data driven book that has set me thinking and asking more searching questions about the history of the last century than any other book that I have read in years. I like books that profoundly reframe an historical period and this does it for me for the twentieth. Read it and inhale deeply. It cries out for a psychologist to write a companion volume to understand the social psychology of species self destruction, when McNeill's data points to such obvious results. Imagine what his successor will write in the book on the 21st century in the early years of the 22nd??