Like Jared Diamond's Guns Germs & Steel Clive Ponting's book studies the relationship between the environment & human history. It examines world civilisations from Sumeria to ancient Egypt from Easter Island to the Roman Empire & it argues that human beings have repeatedly built societies that have grown & prospered by exploiting the Earth's resources only to expand to the point where those resources could no longer sustain the societies' populations & cause subsequent collapse. This new edition of Clive Ponting's international bestseller has been revised expanded & 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
- & the problems that have to be addressed in the search for solutions.