Something happened to the world sometime after 1945. Something that included the end of World War II and post-war recovery, but was far more fundamental than that.
Humanity went into overdrive.
In my reading on the Anthropocene, this book and this phrase keep cropping up. The Great Acceleration gives a bird’s-eye view of the environmental history of our world since the 1950s. A period when multiple factors—technological, medical, and demographical—converged to propel the human species onto a trajectory of unprecedented growth.
The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the Anthropocene Since 1945, written by John R. McNeill and Peter Engelke, published by Belknap Press (a Harvard University Press imprint) in April 2016 (paperback, 275 pages)
Let me begin with two pieces of background information to set the scene. First, this book. It was originally published in 2014 as chapter 3 of the book Global Interdependence. This, in turn, is the sixth volume of Harvard University Press’s ambitious book series A History of the World which is almost complete (only the second volume remains in preparation as of this moment). At well over 1,000 pages per volume, these books are no lightweights and notable contributions have been reissued in paperback, as happened for this book in 2016.
Second, the term “Anthropocene”. Coined in the year 2000 by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer, it describes the most recent period in human history in which our activities, and especially their unintended consequences, have started significantly impacting, even overwhelming, Earth’s natural biogeochemical cycles. I have previously reviewed The Anthropocene as a Geological Time Unit which makes the geological case for this term (McNeill contributed to this book). The Great Acceleration draws on environmental history to make the case that the Anthropocene started around the 1950s. In four large chapters, the authors touch on a range of topics to show how this has been “the most anomalous and unrepresentative period in [our] 200,000-year-long history” (p. 5).
“The Great Acceleration gives a bird’s-eye view of the environmental history of our world since the 1950s. […] “certainly the most anomalous and unrepresentative period in [our] 200,000-year-long history“”
First they turn to two of the biggest drivers of the many Anthropocene signatures: energy and population. Fossil fuels unlocked plentiful energy, with the coal-driven Industrial Revolution just a warm-up exercise. In the decades after World War II, several factors converged (the rise of consumer culture, the desire for affluence going global, oil overtaking coal) to explode energy consumption. Of all the quoted numbers I will just mention one: “our species has probably used more energy since 1920 than in all of our prior human history” (p. 9). Cheap energy expanded the scope of what was economically rewarding, bringing into existence new energy-intensive activities, e.g. the Haber–Bosch process to produce artificial fertiliser. Another contributing factor was, of course, population growth, with our numbers more than tripling from 2.3 to 7.2 billion between 1945 and 2015. Of note, though, is McNeill and Engelke’s nuanced attitude on this topic. Through a range of examples they show that the axiom of modern environmentalism, that more people means more environmental damage, “is not true always and everywhere. When and where it is true, the degree to which it is true is extremely variable” (p. 50). That said, our hunger for energy causes environmental problems at every step: during extraction (mining and drilling), refinement, transportation (particularly oil spills), and burning (air pollution).
Closest to home for me was the second chapter which covered climate and biodiversity. Some of the topics discussed here are the rise in atmospheric CO2, the history of climate science, and its entry into the political arena. But also biodiversity loss, global deforestation, and overfishing. When you plot these in graphs, many of them, though not deforestation, show a clear upward inflection point around the 1950s.
“”The entire life experience of almost everyone now living has taken place within the eccentric historical moment of the Great Acceleration“. […] We take this to be the new normal, but this “brief blip in human history” cannot last.”
Less familiar ground for me was the chapter covering cities and the economy. This discusses urbanisation and its discontents (poverty and slums, and the effect of the car on suburbs) and experiments with green(er) cities. Economic growth was enabled by, again, abundant energy, population growth (more people means more economic activity), and technological inventions. Two particularly influential inventions are highlighted here. First, the humble shipping container that, since its invention in 1956, “did more to promote international trade than all free trade agreements put together” (p. 136). Second, the explosion around WWII in mass production of many new variants of that miracle material: plastic; though that love affair quickly soured when we discovered most of it ends up in the ocean. McNeill and Engelke furthermore consider both global economic patterns (former colonies and socialist countries being brought into the capitalist fold) and regional economic shifts in Asia and Russia, plus the dissenting views of ecological economics and sustainable development that have nevertheless not been able to stem economic growth.
The most interesting chapter for me was the last one on the Cold War and the rise of environmentalism. Noteworthy highlights here are the environmental cost of nuclear weapons production and testing, and how it spawned much of the environmental movement. The insanity of China’s Great Leap Forward that, through failed grain production and Mao Zedong’s fetish for steel production, took a staggering toll on both humans and the environment. Or the environmental legacy of the Cold War in Southern Africa and Vietnam—we all know Agent Orange, but look up Rome plows. When McNeill and Engelke chart the rise of the environmental movement, they look well beyond the cliché of young hippies and the idea that only wealthy Westerners, no longer worried about meeting their basic needs, have environmental concerns. Environmentalism became wedded to social justice movements for many of the world’s poor who found themselves at the receiving end of what Rob Nixon has called the “slow violence” of pollution and climate change. And it became wedded to political dissent in socialist Russia and China where environmentalism was long suppressed.
“”to date, the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration coincide. But they will not for long” […]. Their disentangling heralds a new transition […] for which we are woefully unprepared.”
The most frightening and simultaneously eye-opening insight this book offers is that of shifting baselines: “Only one in twelve persons now alive can remember anything before 1945. The entire life experience of almost everyone now living has taken place within the eccentric historical moment of the Great Acceleration” (p. 5). We take this to be the new normal, but this “brief blip in human history” cannot last. The authors remain agnostic on whether the future holds sustainability or collapse, whether our environmental legacy will haunt us for generations to come or outlive us. However, “to date, the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration coincide. But they will not for long” (p. 208). Their disentangling heralds a new transition, whether to collapse or a steady-state economy, for which we are woefully unprepared.
The range of countries and historical episodes included make The Great Acceleration a deeply informed and refreshingly broad work. If you want to understand how the whole world veered onto a radically new trajectory post-1950s, this compact book is a fascinating and quick read that offers a bird’s-eye view.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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Harvard University Press’s A History of the World series:
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The legendary British broadcaster and natural historian Sir David Attenborough needs almost no introduction. Since his first appearance on our television screens in 1954, he has gone on to a long and distinguished career presenting and narrating groundbreaking nature documentaries. And he shows no sign of slowing down. His voice and style have become so iconic that he has been dubbed the voice of nature. Over the years, he has increasingly expressed concern over the state of the natural world, and in A Life on Our Planet Attenborough fully engages with this topic. However, when you turn to the title page you will notice the name of a co-author, Jonnie Hughes, who directed the Netflix documentary tied in with this book. As Attenborough explains in his acknowledgements, Hughes has been particularly instrumental in the writing of the third part of the book, together with substantial assistance from the Science Team at WWF. This is Attenborough’s witness statement, yes, but whose vision of the future is it?
A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future, written by Sir David Attenborough with Jonnie Hughes, published by Witness Books (an imprint of Ebury Press) in October 2020 (hardback, 282 pages)
A Life on Our Planet is divided into three parts, the first of which features highlights from Attenborough’s filmmaking career. Interwoven with vignettes that you might recognize from his autobiography are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest. Overlaid is his increasing concern for the changes he has witnessed. Each chapter heading ominously lists the human world population, the atmospheric carbon level, and the estimated percentage of wilderness remaining in a certain year.
The brief second part, “What Lies Ahead”, serves as a bridge to the third part and introduces several important concepts. One is the Great Acceleration, the period following the 1950s in which our activity and impact on the environment ramped up tremendously. The other is the Planetary Boundaries model drawn up by Johan Rockström and colleagues, which I brought up in my previous review of Planetary Accounting. This Earth systems science framework demarcates a “safe operating space for humanity” by identifying nine planetary processes and systems with their boundary values, several of which we have exceeded with our actions. In just ten pages, the book then looks ahead to some likely environmental tipping points in our near future, such as forest dieback and permafrost melting. I was expecting a longer section along the lines of Lynas’s Our Final Warning and Wallace-Well’s The Uninhabitable Earth, but clearly, this book has no interest in dwelling on the catastrophes ahead.
“Interwoven with autobiographical vignettes are short episodes in the history of life on our planet and the rise of human civilization—this is Attenborough writing at his finest.”
This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief. The book takes the planetary boundaries model with its ecological ceiling and Kate Raworth’s modification known as the Doughnut model, which adds a social foundation to it, i.e. the minimum requirements for human well-being. It then outlines some of the changes required to significantly reduce our impact on the planet, leaning towards “green” and nature-based solutions aimed primarily at restoring biodiversity. The overall tone here is hopeful and the book hits many relevant points, though I have some criticism.
Let’s start with what I appreciated. First, and this feels like Attenborough speaking, it gets its philosophy right, tackling anthropocentrism: “We moved from being a part of nature to being apart from nature […] we need to reverse that transition” (p. 125). It also acknowledges the shifting baseline syndrome in the context of fisheries and beyond: how each generation takes an increasingly impoverished environment as the new normal. Right out of the gate it tackles the need to move beyond the paradigm of perpetual growth and abandon Gross Domestic Product as our prime measure of welfare. Agriculture will have to rely on far less land through solutions that are high-tech (e.g. hydroponic greenhouses run on renewable energy), or low-tech (e.g. a shift away from monocultures to something more approaching functional ecosystems via regenerative farming and the growing of mixed crops). Most important would be a change from a meat- to a plant-based diet. Attenborough again: “When I was young […] meat was a rare treat” (p. 169). We should want less stuff and require our things to be repairable and recyclable, moving ultimately towards a circular economy. This all ties in nicely, although it is not spelt out here, with an ethos of self-limitation that we need to reclaim.
“This brings us to the vision for the future, which is where the question of authorship becomes increasingly blurred. At times I was not sure whether I was reading Attenborough’s voice or a WWF policy brief.”
Carbon capture will have to be achieved not by high-tech solutions, but by both reforestation on land and the farming of kelp forests in the sea (Ruth Kassinger already made the point in Slime that algae might just save the world). Both these solutions will help the massive rewilding efforts this book envisions: Marine Protected Areas will help fish populations to recover, resulting in sustainable fisheries, while on land more habitat will become available for wild animals. And, finally and importantly, the book tackles human population numbers, aiming for the humane solution of stabilising the world population as quickly as possible at 9–11 billion people by lifting people out of poverty and empowering women.
The holistic package proposed here, underpinned with examples of success stories from around the globe, almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? The authors acknowledge that many of these transitions will not come easily and will require everyone to come together and cooperate (in itself a tall order). Where achievability is concerned, the devil is in the details, and I do feel that these are sometimes glossed over and that taboo subjects are avoided.
Take agriculture—there is no mention of the tremendous potential of genetically modified organisms. Similarly unmentioned regarding renewable energy is the concept of energy density and our reliance on increasingly energy-dense fuels as civilization progressed. There is no consideration of the tremendous amount of resources needed to build and maintain the necessary infrastructure. A combined solution of renewable and nuclear energy (admittedly a non-renewable) is considered a no-no. And though a circular economy is a step up from our linear system of produce-use-discard, you cannot endlessly recycle: a constant influx of virgin material is required. Not all metals can be economically recovered, nor all the compound materials we make unmade. Ever tried unfrying an egg? Entropy does not run that way.
“The holistic package proposed here […] almost makes it sound like we can have it all. Can we? […] these transitions will not come easily and […] the devil is in the details.”
The word “overpopulation” is studiously avoided, which is remarkable as Attenborough has been outspoken on the subject elsewhere (see this short explainer or the 2011 RSA President’s Lecture). The closest he gets to it here is when he writes that “we have overrun the Earth” (p. 100). Later, the possibility of a demographic transition to a declining world population is mentioned, but not the suggestion put forward by some that a lower world population of, say, 2–3 billion might be more sustainable. And though Attenborough points out increased longevity as a contributing factor, there is no examination of our relationship with death. Should we really direct all our efforts to maximising life span? At what cost, both environmental and quality-of-life-wise? And, lastly, the now-dominant narrative of female empowerment is only half the story and puts the onus squarely on their shoulders. Making contraception and abortion available to women is needed, but better still would be to prevent pregnancies by starting with male education. Condom, gentlemen?
Admittedly, I am arguing details here. Though they need serious consideration in my opinion, much of what is proposed here is sensible. A Life on Our Planet is very accessible and admirably concise. Its central message, that things cannot continue as they are, stands. If there is anyone who can communicate this to a wide audience, it is Sir David Attenborough. Some of the writing here will stick with you long after you have closed the book: “We often talk of saving the planet, but the truth is that we must do these things to save ourselves.” (p. 218). Here speaks a wise elder who, even at 94, indefatigably defends our environment.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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To figure out how old a tree is, all you have to do is count its rings, and some truly ancient trees grace the pages of this book. But, as tree-ring researcher Valerie Trouet shows, that is the least fascinating thing you can derive from wood. Revealing the inner workings of the academic field formally known as dendrochronology, Tree Story is an immersive jaunt through archaeology, palaeoclimatology, and environmental history. A beautifully written and designed book, it highlights the importance and usefulness of tree rings in reconstructing past climate and linking it to human history.
Tree Story: The History of the World Written in Rings, written by Valerie Trouet, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in May 2020 (hardback, 246 pages)
The first things that struck me when opening Tree Story were the beautifully designed endpapers (more on the illustrations later). At the front of the book is a world map with thumbnails of important trees and sites, and what chapters they feature in. At the back is a timeline of key historical periods and events, both human and climatological. Too few publishers make use of this, so we are off to a great start.
The first few chapters of Tree Story provide an excellent introduction. Trouet traces the history of dendrochronology to its unlikely birthplace in the Arizona desert, explains how tree rings are actually formed in living trees, and how, based on fluctuating climatic conditions, their appearance changes. Years with good growing conditions result in wider rings, while challenging years with droughts, storms, or other climatic upheavals result in narrower rings. That last factor is key when it comes to dating (in the chronological sense): the unique pattern of wider and narrower rings acts as a barcode. By looking at many trees in different parts of the world, researchers have constructed large databases of overlapping tree ring patterns that go back millennia. Using these can tell you how long ago a certain tree died, and therefore how old a wooden object or building is.
Having covered these basics, the bulk of Tree Story consists of a series of immersive chapters that look at some of the most interesting studies done using tree rings. For one, they play an important role in palaeoclimatology. The historical record of weather stations only extends back a few centuries, so to reconstruct past climates, palaeoclimatologists use proxies: indirect traces that correlate with climate. These have been collected from ice cores, lake sediments, stalagmites, and, of course, tree rings. But the pattern of rings only reveals so much. The width of rings will not tell you if a tree was stressed because of drought or cold, for example. By looking closer with lab instruments you can measure the wood density in individual rings, and that is primarily determined by temperature. It was one of the many proxies used by climate scientists to reconstruct the famous hockey-stick graph of past temperatures.
“harvest dates […] of trees used in the construction of historical buildings […] has revealed phases where building activity peaked, alternating with periods where plagues or the collapse of empires saw construction grind to a halt.”
Researchers have also compared harvest dates of thousands of trees used in the construction of historical buildings. This has revealed phases where building activity peaked, alternating with periods where plagues or the collapse of empires saw construction grind to a halt. One prominent example is the complex decline of the Roman Empire, which was illuminated (as Trouet gracefully acknowledges here) in Kyle Harper’s excellent book The Fate of Rome. Wood in historical buildings or archaeological dig sites can also cast a light on the history of regional deforestation and the ensuing timber trade as people started importing wood from forests further away from major population centres. This is the subtle art of dendroprovenancing.
Even more jaw-dropping is the link Trouet has drawn between tree rings, shipwrecks, and pirates. Hurricanes that rip leaves and branches off trees result in years of poor growth, leaving a visible mark in the tree-ring record. But hurricanes also sink ships. And when she compared the historical record of shipwrecks with that of hurricanes captured in tree rings, the two matched beautifully. At the same time, an extended period of reduced sunspot activity known as the Maunder Minimum reduced temperatures and, with it, storm activity, coinciding with the Golden Age of Piracy from approximately 1650–1720.
“Even more jaw-dropping is the link Trouet has drawn between tree rings, shipwrecks, and pirates. […] As you keep reading, the exciting examples of cross-disciplinary science underpinned by tree rings just keep coming, right up to the final chapter.”
As you keep reading, the exciting examples of cross-disciplinary science underpinned by tree rings just keep coming, right up to the final chapter. The impact of past volcanic eruptions such as Tambora. The fluctuations of the jet stream blowing high up in the atmosphere that shows in tree rings at ground level. The amazing story of how a suspected large earthquake in the Pacific Northwest was confirmed by historical records of a tsunami of unknown origin in Japan. The history of forest fires and different fire regimes read from tree scars. The Little Ice Age in Europe and how it was cleverly exploited by the Dutch. Some authors, notably archaeologist Brian Fagan, have build careers on investigating the link between climate and the rise and fall of nations, although Trouet is quick to point out that it is an oversimplification to think that climatic changes alone topple civilizations. Other factors are just as important in determining the resilience of societies.
The clarity of Trouet’s explanations stands out, as does the book’s pacing: chapters are just the right length and never outstay their welcome. Thoughtful little extras are the glossary, the list of tree species, and separate lists with references and recommended reading. Add to this her personal stories and anecdotes based on a twenty-year career. She strikes the right balance between entertaining the reader without overshadowing the scientific narrative. And she moves you: these stories will make you laugh, cringe, or (in the case of the relentless persecution that followed the publication of the hockey-stick graph) anger you.
“A massive shout-out to the illustrator, Oliver Uberti. […] His [infographics] are uniform, clean, crisp, legible, clearly labelled, and (importantly) designed to be printed in grayscale—and those lovely endpapers really turn the book into a keepsake.”
Without wanting to take your attention away from the wonderful book that Trouet has written here, I want to give a massive shout-out to the illustrator, Oliver Uberti. His style looked familiar and I realise I have previously heaped praise on his infographics when reviewing Who We Are and How We Got Here. His illustrations give the book a certain cachet and are uniform, clean, crisp, legible, clearly labelled, and (importantly) designed to be printed in grayscale—and those lovely endpapers really turn the book into a keepsake. Publishers and authors should pay close attention and be lining up to commission him.
Tree Story is a sublime example of what booksellers have lately started calling smart non-fiction: sophisticated academic books for a broad audience (often published by American university presses) that are just a few notches above the yuck or wow-factor of more generic popular science. The excellent clarity and pacing that Trouet brings to this fascinating topic meant I that tore through Tree Story in a day. If I added ratings to my reviews, this book would be a ten out of ten. Already, this is a very strong contender for my book of the year.
Disclosure: The publisher provided a review copy of this book. The opinion expressed here is my own, however.
Other recommended books mentioned in this review:
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