Storia verde del mondo

A Green History addresses the influence of the environment on human history over the past 10,000 years, starting with the expansion of hunting and gathering groups, and the transition to settled agriculture. Ponting describes how exhaustion of the resources to which they had access doomed many human societies. Ponting begins with the history of human settlement on Easter Island. This history serves as a cautionary example of the inability of a human society to stop destroying its natural resources even when it is obvious that continued resource destruction will doom future generations to life on a barren island with no possibility of escape. Our global society is now embarked on an incomparably massive resource extraction. Will we transcend the barriers that previous societies did not? Ponting does not propose solutions. He provides a wealth of illuminating and extremely sobering historical detail. (http://www.ecobooks.com/books/history.htm)