Reading non-fiction books about climate change has, over the years, come to feel like a form of masochism. Rarely do I come away feeling optimistic about the future of this planet and, honestly, it has taken an emotional toll. Which is why I’d much rather read novels that tackle climate change (and not necessarily of the dystopian sort).
That said, when I read the first line of The Burning Earth: A History by Sunil Amrith I was hooked.
He begins: Once upon a time all history was environmental history.
Amrith takes us back to the beginning, long before the industrial age turned up the heat on this planet, to the beginnings of civilization itself:
The transformation of the world began with desire, even as most human lives scrabbled for subsistence: the desire of powerful rulers for symbols of rank and distinction — for pearls and pepper; for gold and silver and sugar. Already by 1300, the products of distant places were arrayed in hoards within Eurasia’s royal treasuries. The harder they were to find, the more they were worth.
Desire and greed led the Iberians to the Americas in search of riches, where they undertook waves of mass killing so great that one scientist believes the sudden depopulation impacted the climate, leading to the Little Ice Age. And while the invaders did not find the gold in quantities that they had hoped they did find silver and turned a mine in Bolivia into the largest city of the Americas: Potosi with 160,000 residents working under unimaginable conditions. Today, we look no further than cobalt mines in the Congo to see similarly awful conditions.
From Potosi to Johannesburg to Baku, the cycle of exploitation and extraction repeat throughout history and throughout this book. It is sobering to realize that the circumstances we find ourselves in today are not just the results of the industrial age but of something much deeper, something much darker. And then there are the wars, such the Great War, where Amrith notes that 16 million horses were forced into labor and an estimated 7 million died.
Indeed the magnitude of death and suffering of human and non-human animals is hard to comprehend. And when you take the long view, with Amrith as guide, it becomes clear that this pattern that keep repeating must be stopped. And this is where we all have a critical role to play.
Amrith writes:
An even more radical shift in food systems is urgent, and it is hard to imagine its success. No single change would have a more transformative impact on the health of the planet than human beings choosing to eat fewer animal products.
Not many climate change books tackle the foods we eat but Amrith bravely goes there. And he also notes the challenges; the food choices we make are deeply intertwined with family and culture and may prove difficult to change. That said, he writes:
Food preferences are deeply rooted by never static. Changes in culinary desire have driven sweeping changes in how human beings have exploited the Earth, and exploited each other — more pivotally, in modern history, the European taste for sugar and fine sieces. In times of privation, as during both world wars, food habits have changed very suddenly. There are signs that they are changing again in response to ecological concerns.
To solve climate change, those of us with the means to do so would be far better off simply changing our diets, changing demand, and usurping entire industries that are determined to take the planet down with them. It’s possible. And it’s all connected:
When I first started out as a historian, I saw environmental concerns as secondary to political rights, economic empowerment, and social justice. I now believe that they are inseparable, and that the pursuit of environmental justice extends and builds on those earlier and still-unfinished struggles for human freedom.
As a historian, Sunil Amrith provides readers with a narrative that spans continents and centuries, calling out exploiters with compassion for the exploited. And if all history is environmental history, we all are authors of this next critical chapter.
John is co-author, with Midge Raymond, of the eco-mystery Devils Island, forthcoming in 2024. He is also author of the novels The Tourist Trail and Where Oceans Hide Their Dead. Co-founder of Ashland Creek Press and editor of Writing for Animals (also now a writing program).
