Rating: 
Summary: Very thorough and eye-opening
Review: Clive Ponting has put a great deal of research into this book. So much ground is covered that it's hard to do justice here; very thorough. If you think our civilization isn't vulnerable to collapse, you might need to rethink your position after reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: very good overview and introduction to the subject
Review: Clive Ponting's book provides a very good introduction to the subject. It is well written and serves as an excellent starting point, introducing the important questions and providing thought provoking conclusions.Comments that the book is inaccurate regarding Easter Island are illogical. As Ponting points out, the very first Europeans to arrive on the island found a society already devastated by the environmental degradation that it failed to prevent. The diseases inadvertantly spread to the Easter Islanders through this first European contact were not a primary cause of the downfall of the island civilization.
Rating:
Summary: History from the Environment's Point of View
Review: Clive Ponting's subtitle is slightly misleading, as this book is less about the history of civilization's collapse than a history of civilization's influence on the environment. This is a thorough and interesting study of how humans have changed or damaged their natural surroundings from the earliest hunter-gatherer days through the modern post-Industrial world. It seems that any modification of the environment has unintended and unexpected consequences down the road. Of course in the past few had the time or the vision to anticipate these consequences, and we are now living with the results of centuries of pollution, salinization, and general degradation. This is not a polemic but a well-argued study which asks us to consider whether our effect on the natural world has been more for good or ill. It is a good precursor to ideas later developed further in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, among others.
Rating:
Summary: History from the Environment's Point of View
Review: Clive Ponting's subtitle is slightly misleading, as this book is less about the history of civilization's collapse than a history of civilization's influence on the environment. This is a thorough and interesting study of how humans have changed or damaged their natural surroundings from the earliest hunter-gatherer days through the modern post-Industrial world. It seems that any modification of the environment has unintended and unexpected consequences down the road. Of course in the past few had the time or the vision to anticipate these consequences, and we are now living with the results of centuries of pollution, salinization, and general degradation. This is not a polemic but a well-argued study which asks us to consider whether our effect on the natural world has been more for good or ill. It is a good precursor to ideas later developed further in Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel, among others.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent one-volume overview
Review: If you are politically active in any sphere -- environmental, feminist, race, labour issues -- and as a result you do a lifetime of research and reading and discussion, you often feel a sense of despair when attempting to explain your point of view to anyone who hasn't covered the same ground. Waving a booklist several pages long doesn't seem like a good way to win hearts and minds. So you wish for a book you could recommend that would really provide the broad overview, the minimal foundation of your own understanding. For the automobile critic it's probably "Asphalt Nation." For the media critic it might be "Manufacturing Consent". Environmental economists have various basic texts to draw on, but at present I nominate Ponting as the best compromise between accessibility and comprehensiveness. In one fairly brief volume he manages to summarize the technological and economic history of the human race, the central importance of food production throughout that history, and the implications of prior human experience for today's human experience. Ponting's chapter on the age of European expansion might be the best concise survey essay on colonialism that I've read. That one chapter alone is worth the price of admission, and offers a capable answer to the frequently asked question "Why can't the Third World make capitalism work?" Without ranting, without apparent passion, Ponting calmly documents the astonishingly consistent historical record of blundering, self-deception, short-sightedness, and deliberate criminality that has led the G7 nations to the peak of world power. He has been criticized by some readers for insufficient attention to political or social-justice issues, or for insufficient outrage at some of the crimes he documents. I find his detached narrative viewpoint to be a valuable attribute of the book; it calms the reader and makes it possible to read with interest what would otherwise be a bloodcurdling narrative, and a horribly depressing one. If I had to give just one book to a person who asked "but what's wrong with GNP accounting," or "what do you mean, 'unsustainable'" or "what does overconsumption mean?" I think I would now, unhesitatingly, recommend Ponting. It is ideal as a text for any high-school or undergraduate level class in economic history. It is ideal as the founding volume of any curious person's libary of environmental literature. It makes a handy reference work for anyone looking for a relevant statistic about population, fish stocks, the conquest of the Americas, epidemic diseases, and a host of other topics. Ponting punctures cherished myths with the casual unconcern of a writer whose only concern is fact. GHW is perhaps the single most powerful anti-smugness medication (in one compact dose) that I could prescribe for any G7 resident. If you have only one chance to convince a dear friend that environmental issues are real and urgent; if you have only one title on environmental issues in your upcoming class booklist; if you want a handy, solid, one-volume reference for those maddening internet discussions; if you need to explain to an office mate just why you are not so keen on untested GMO releases; or if you just want a book that will cause lively discussion for your reading club -- I can heartily recommend Ponting. He has earned a place in the environmentalist canon. I feel the impulse to give lots of copies away to friends and colleagues, and what higher praise is there?
Rating: 
Summary: incomplete facts, needs an editor, cant stay on subject
Review: man abuses our environment
there, now you dont have to sit throug 400 pages of ranting about how statistics are proving we destroy our environment. If you need this book to realize we are a destructive race; well then maybe you should read it, its so repetative you are bound to get the idea.
Rating: 
Summary: Well travelled road
Review: Ponting seems to be onto an intresting idea; environmental destruction leading to the collapse of many of the world's great civilizations. However, this is really old ground, well covered by other authors. Most readers would be better servered picking up a copy of George Perkin Marsh's *Man and Nature* and starting there. Don't turn to *A Green History of the World* if you want any detail about the collapse of ancient civilization or the latest historiography. For example, we learn that overpopulation, intenstive agriculture, and deforestation led to the collapse of one civilization after another. And yet very little about climatic changes, foreign invasions, diseases, and other causes of collapse. Ponting can't be expected to write a history of everything, but he at least needs to seriously consider the alternative explanations for the collapse of the various civilzations he discusses. Most readers will find that Ponting's post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (the after this, because of this, fallacy) particularly troublesome. Just because the envirnomental destruction occured along with the collapse of many ancient civilizations does not mean that environmental destruction caused their collapse. We need more careful and thoughtful explanations about how, specifically, environmental degredation led to social changes.
Rating: 
Summary: decent
Review: This book is very interesting. It also moves very slowly. The format is well thought out, and there has been a lot of time and research put into the book
Rating:
Summary: A must read. It may change how you think.
Review: This just isn't some greenpeace hippy book. It really gets into many fascinating aspects of mankind's err with our world. Things might change for a better future if everyone read this book.
Rating:
Summary: A must read. It may change how you think.
Review: This just isn't some greenpeace hippy book. It really gets into many fascinating aspects of mankind's err with our world. Things might change for a better future if everyone read this book.
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