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Something New Under the Sun: Review Essay Example | Graduateway
May 02, · Contrary to the wisdom of Ecclesiastes that "there is nothing new under the sun," McNeill sets out to show that the massive change we have wrought in our physical world has indeed created something new. To a degree unprecedented in human history, we have refashioned the earth's air, water, and soil, and the biosphere of which we are a part."Pages: Apr 17, · Extensively footnoted and balanced in its claims, John McNeill’s Something New Under the Sun is an engaging and worthwhile study of the environmental history of the twentieth century. It covers atmospheric, hydrospheric, and biospheric concerns - focusing on those human actions and technologies that have had the greatest impact on the world 4/5(2). Download something new under the sun ebook free in PDF and EPUB Format. something new under the sun also available in docx and mobi. Read something new under the sun .
Something new under the sun pdf download
This heinous device, a type of virtual-reality machine, plays on the fundamental inadequacies of the human psyche by delivering a precise and irrefutable mental image of a victim's entirely negligible importance in the universal scheme of things, whereupon the poor fellow invariably descends into gibbering madness.
The moral? Given the extent to which our brains have been wired by evolution to deal with the universe at minuscule spatial and temporal scales, the very last thing that a human being can afford to own is a sense of perspective, something new under the sun pdf download.
As we enter the 21st century, however, something new under the sun pdf download, the acquisition of a global and deep sense of temporal perspective seems to offer our last chance of managing Earth to the benefit of our fellows, our children, and all our cousins in the earthly family of life. To achieve this, we must try to understand the long history and slow workings of the planet, the timescales over which it has accommodated change in the past, and the extent to which rapid, human-induced environmental changes might currently be exceeding its ability to cope.
Only against the backdrop of history can we evaluate our actions in the present and predict the likely outcomes in the future. It is with this philosophy in mind that John McNeill embarked on his engrossing new book.
McNeill's aim is to catalogue the major 20th-century activities of our species and interpret their environmental impact within the broader contexts of human and Earth history. Some of his statistics are quite remarkable. For example, we have probably used 10 times more energy in the last century than our ancestors used in the previous millennium.
McNeill will probably not appreciate this admittedly crude, back-of-an-envelope calculation being bandied around by something new under the sun pdf download, but it is such an extraordinary estimate that I suspect he will have to get used to it. In the 20th century, humanity has also moved more rock and soil around the globe than wind, glaciers, mountain-building processes or volcanoes.
Only water remains a more significant erosive agent, but with continued growth of the global human population, it will probably not be long before we occupy the top spot. So numerous and powerful have we become in the last years that we now collectively qualify as a geological process, and among the most significant on the planet at that.
Similarly illuminating and powerful statistics are set before the reader as McNeill assesses the extent of humanity's recent influence on the Earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere. The rate at which mammal species went extinct in the 20th century, for example, was about 40 times higher than "normal", while the corresponding figure for birds is nearer 1, times greater. Expert opinion varies, but some scientists predict a loss of between a third and a half of the world's terrestrial species in the next century or two.
On the basis of these and other worrying estimates, McNeill suggests that we may unwittingly be pushing the biosphere ever nearer to a global mass extinction. Others suspect that we may already be in the midst of one. Will the biosphere, including humans, be able to cope with escalating exploitation of the world's resources and the enormous losses of biodiversity that look set to ensue?
No one has the faintest idea. A little exhausted, the reader reaches page of Something New Under the Sun expecting to encounter the index, but instead finds McNeill embarking on Part Two of his treatise, an assessment of the demographic, something new under the sun pdf download, economic, political and something new under the sun pdf download forces that led to the environmental impacts he has described. Here he is as sure-footed as ever, relating with clarity and insight the underlying reasons for 20th-century population growth, urbanisation, migration, industrialisation, spiralling consumption and manipulation of the Earth's natural resources, and the staggering growth in economic activity that, one way or another, has led to our current somewhat precarious environmental situation.
Lest the reader conclude that this book is just another doom-laden environmental rant, it should be pointed out that McNeill's approach to his subject is dispassionate, balanced, and as objective as the source material allows. He is content to chronicle and sensibly evaluate the growth of human influence on the environment in the 20th century, and leave the reader to make up his or her own mind as to the wisdom and likely consequences of our activities.
In a field that inspires great passion in its protagonists and frequent polarisation of opinion, Something New Under the Sun is a breath of fresh air. It is also a monumental, important and timely work of interdisciplinary scholarship, written to be accessible to anyone interested in the relationship between our species and the planet that supports us. Topics Science and nature books. Reuse this content. Most popular.
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John Soluri; Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World. By J. R. McNeill (New York: W. W. Norton, xxvi plus 42 We use cookies to enhance your experience on our blogger.com continuing to use our website, you are agreeing to our use of cookies. Aug 25, · Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth Century John McNeill Allen Lane, £20, pp Buy it at BOL. According to Douglas Adams in . SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN EBOOK Download Something New Under The Sun Ebook ebook PDF or Read Online books in PDF, EPUB, and Mobi Format. Click Download or Read Online button to SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN EBOOK book pdf for free now.
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