Book Review

Comparative/World

Are humans sharklike or ratlike? J. R. McNeill seeks to answer that question as he explores the environmental history of the twentieth-century world. As a species, McNeill contends, humans are ratlike insofar as they pursue survival strategies of adaptability: "In the very long view of biological evolution, the best survival strategy is to be adaptable, to pursue diverse sources of subsistence—and to maximize resilience" (p. xxii). In the twentieth century, however, human societies appeared to be more sharklike: that is, adopting strategies of supreme adaptation to existing circumstances. Such an approach proved precarious in a period when the global ecology was, as McNeill characterizes it, "ever more unstable." In an era of cheap energy, cheap water, rapid population growth, and fast economic growth, "To regard these circumstances as enduring, and normal, and to depend on their continuation," he concludes, "is an interesting gamble" (p. xxiii).

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McNeill's book is not, however, a chiding, finger-pointing, "I told you so" study. The tone is in no way condescending or smug. Ranging widely over the twentieth century, McNeill explores human impacts on the earth's atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere. He takes account of demographics, urbanization, energy regimes, technological change, economic development, and politics. What keeps the book from becoming a shopping list of random categories is a consistent emphasis on some well-considered major themes: that the twentieth century was unusual for the intensity of change and the central role of humans in prompting that change; that "this ecological peculiarity" was the unintended consequence of a range of preferences and patterns; and that patterns of thought, behavior, production, and consumption are adapted to the current circumstances of the twentieth century (i.e. abundant energy and water, population and economic growth).

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