Leesfragment: The Earth Transformed

Nu in onze boekhandels: Peter Frankopans nieuwe boek The Earth Transformed: An Untold History. Lees bij ons een fragment uit de inleiding.

In The Earth Transformed, Peter Frankopan, one of the world’s leading historians, shows that the natural environment is a crucial, if not the defining, factor in global history - and not just of humankind. Volcanic eruptions, solar activities, atmospheric, oceanic and other shifts, as well as anthropogenic behaviour, are fundamental parts of the past and the present. In this magnificent and groundbreaking book, we learn about the origins of our species: about the development of religion and language and their relationships with the environment; about how the desire to centralise agricultural surplus formed the origins of the bureaucratic state; about how growing demands for harvests resulted in the increased shipment of enslaved peoples; about how efforts to understand and manipulate the weather have a long and deep history. All provide lessons of profound importance as we face a precarious future of rapid global warming.

Taking us from the Big Bang to the present day and beyond, The Earth Transformed forces us to reckon with humankind’s continuing efforts to make sense of the natural world.

N.B. Lees ook op onze site een fragment uit Frankopans De nieuwe zijderoutes.

My first encounter with the human impact on the environment and climate change came with a children’s current affairs programme called John Craven’s Newsround which was shown every day in the UK when I was a young boy. Newsround was a flagship BBC project that was a lifeline, connecting younger viewers to the world beyond the British Isles.
One of the few programmes my parents allowed my siblings and me to watch when we were growing up, it introduced me to the suffering of people at the hands of the Khmer Rouge, to the complexities of the Middle East and to the realities of the Cold War. One of the themes that came up regularly in the late 1970s and early 1980s was the subject of acid rain. I remember being transfixed by the horror of trees without leaves and by the thought that human activity was responsible for the degradation of nature. The idea that the factories belched emissions that devastated forests, killed animals and contaminated the ground came as a shock to me. Even as a young boy, it seemed obvious that the choices we made to produce goods and products had impacts that had long-term effects on us all.
These misgivings were compounded by a fear of devastation that was a hallmark of my childhood. I am part of a generation that was brought up to believe that the world might see global nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union that would result in large-scale death not only from the detonation of countless intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) but from the nuclear winter that would result from mushroom clouds released by warheads on impact. One film, When the Wind Blows, which came out in the mid-1980s, painted a poignant and awful picture of what lay ahead: sadness, suffering, hunger and death - all because of humanity’s ability to invent weapons of mass destruction that would not only kill millions through firestorms and explosions, but would change the earth’s climate so drastically that survival alone would be a miracle.
The detonation of scores of nuclear weapons promised to throw so much debris into the atmosphere that we would have to learn to live in sub-zero temperatures. Sunlight would be blocked by blankets of dust and particles with the result that plants would die. Animals would succumb as a result too - leaving those who survived the blasts not only freezing cold but hungry. Fallout from radiation would contaminate flora and fauna, poisoning all forms of life. The aim was to get through the apocalypse and to hope to be one of the survivors. In due course, we hoped, the climate would reset. Then it would be a case of seeing how many people were left alive and where, and starting again.
The fears of my generation were swelled by disaster, the most dramatic of which was the explosion in 1986 of the reactor at Chernobyl in what is now Ukraine. The reports of the catastrophic failure - strenuously denied for days by the Soviet authorities - were a reminder that miscalculations, misjudgements and incompetence could affect the world we lived in. In the months that followed, I studied maps of the fallout, was careful about what I ate and became acutely aware of the dangers posed by the potential for climatic change.
We used to spend our summers by a lake in the middle of Sweden. We said that we would flee there if there was ever a chance of a nuclear war breaking out. As most people know, Sweden is not the warmest country in the winter as it is; but I was reassured by the idea that being out of the way of soldiers, tanks and missiles would be a benefit. I was also comforted by the knowledge that blueberries (still my favourite fruit) were resilient to the cold. So I had a little bag packed by the side of my bed that I would update each year with my necessities for when (not if) changes to the world’s climate would demand adaptation: a bar of chocolate; a Swiss Army penknife so I could make bows and arrows; some woollen gloves; a deck of cards and three balls; two pens (in case one ran out of ink); and some paper.
As it happened, my preparations were never needed - although it turns out that this was often because of luck rather than skill. As we now know, missile launches almost took place because of bears breaking down wire fences in search of food; because of misunderstandings about military exercises that made one side believe an attack was imminent; and because of weather balloons being misidentified as ballistic weapons systems. I grew up in a world of close shaves, near disasters and human error.
To be sure, there were many other things that scared me growing up: the 1970s and 1980s were a time of injustice, hatred, instability terrorism, famine and genocide. But ecological devastation, climate and climate change were constantly in the background as current problems that would get worse in the future. Few things were certain for my generation. One thing was clear: we were all but guaranteed to live on a planet that was more hostile, more unstable and more dangerous than the one we had grown up in. I assumed that that would be because of the catastrophe of global war or large-scale accidents.
It did not cross my mind that the end of the Cold War would lead to an age of ecologies being placed under ever greater stress, or that increased global economic co-operation would result in massive rises in levels of carbon emissions and a warming world. I was brought up to believe that disaster stemmed from the horrors of war; after all, that was what I was taught in the classroom. Peace and harmony, on the other hand, were supposed to be the solution - not part of the problem. And so, a journey that began many years ago watching Newsround has led me to think about human interventions in the landscape, about how the climate might have changed in the past, and above all about the role that climate has played in shaping the history of the world.

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© Peter Frankopan, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.