The Burning Earth: A History by Sunil Amrith; W. W. Norton, 432 pp., $35
In this devastating and essential world history, Sunil Amrith sets out how we humans, during the past thousand years, have altered Earth and, often as not, ravaged it. “To have any hope of undoing the densely woven braid between inequality, violence, and environmental harm,” he writes, “we need to understand its origins.”
Among the many significant events that Amrith discusses is Columbus’s 1492 arrival at Hispaniola, the Caribbean island that now comprises the Dominican Republic and Haiti. There, Columbus and his crew discovered “trees and flowers and birds” that they could not name. Returning to the island the following year, they brought pigs, chickens, dogs, and cats, all of which reproduced prolifically. They brought barley, wheat, leeks, onions, cucumbers, broad beans, citrus fruits, olives, and parsley. They planted sugar cane. They raped, murdered, and enslaved Indigenous people. They brought disease. They destroyed the ecology of the island.
What is new about this? In Amrith’s telling, human and environmental consequences are inseparable. With regard to the European colonization of the Americas, he recounts paleoclimatologist William Ruddiman’s theory that the Little Ice Age, a colder period that peaked around 1610, resulted, in part, from the decimation of the Indigenous population, which caused enormous expanses of cultivated land to revert to “carbon-devouring tropical forests.” An interesting idea, somewhat—though not entirely—supported by the study of ice cores and other evidence.
In envisioning major historical events through the lens of ecology, Amrith brings to light matters less familiar to nonspecialists. In World War I, the German release of chlorine gas at the Battle of Ypres in April 1915 was a turning point in human history: the first battlefield effort to destroy enemy soldiers by turning their environment against them. In World War II, governments used food as a weapon. Mass starvation played a part in the Nazis’ genocidal plan, and Winston Churchill, who despised Gandhi and looked down on the people of India, helped trigger a famine in Bengal.
Throughout this recasting of history, Amrith highlights culture—the arts and the artists who envisioned the connection between humans and Earth. For example, in Akira Kurosawa’s 1952 film Ikiru, a conventional and conformist man, finding that he is terminally ill, spends his remaining days working to create a green space in his neighborhood. Also enlightening are figures profiled (beyond the well-known Hannah Arendt and Rachel Carson) who worked for human rights or environmental restoration. For example, the Brazilian labor activist and environmentalist Chico Mendes stood against powerful ranching interests that were encroaching on the Amazon forest and abusing workers. Ranchers had him murdered in 1988, along with some 90 others that same year, but not before he had become a charismatic and influential environmental leader.
For readers whose comprehension of world history has been shaped primarily by American perspectives, Amrith’s global reach will be eye opening. But he covers so much ground that The Burning Earth can feel like a whirlwind tour, going from one thing to another to another. For instance, the chapter on worldwide postwar development of infrastructure like dams, roads, and oil wells, titled “Freedom’s Promise,” begins in San Francisco at the 1945 inaugural conference of the United Nations. It proceeds to Indonesia, Vietnam, India, and Mexico, then to Egypt and the High Dam at Aswan. It continues to the Caterpillar company in Illinois and its Earth-morphing, earth-moving equipment, then to Singapore (where Amrith grew up), Brazil and its oil production, Iran and its oil production, China and Mao’s environmentally devastating “Great Leap Forward,” back to the United States and the 52 million cars on our roads by 1955, then to East Germany and its enthusiasm for the “petrochemical adornments of modern life.” Climatologists call this post-1945 era “the great acceleration,” and it’s easy to see why. There’s a lot to take in.
Among the more recent developments that Amrith covers are the Green Revolution (high-yielding crops), its benefits (more food for more people), and its downsides (egregious use of fossil fuel and pesticides, the wrecked livelihoods of small farmers). He addresses the destruction of rainforest to produce beef (Brazil), palm oil (Indonesia), and wealth (for elites). He highlights the ecological catastrophe wrought by the oil industry in Nigeria and the resistance movement led, in part, by activist and writer Ken Saro-Wiwa. He recounts the long-running disinformation campaign undertaken by Exxon and Mobil to convince the public, wrongly, that the science on climate change was not conclusive.
Is there reason to hope? Hope arrives, Amrith writes, with the increasing feasibility of alternative forms of energy. What about overpopulation? Perhaps, as Indira Gandhi contended at the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in 1972, the problem is not population but maldistribution of resources such as food. Whatever the case, hope arrives as millions of people become aware that saving the planet, combined with social justice, is how we will save ourselves. Against which are aligned powerful interests that value profit over ecological restoration. Against which is our own drive to consume. There’s hope, yes, but points of no return are fast approaching. There’s hope, if only a sliver. The struggle continues. This book is part of it.
