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Book Review
| Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate. By William F. Ruddiman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. xiv + 202 pp. Illustrations, tables, maps, bibliography, index. Cloth $24.95.
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| It is not often that historians should take note of a book on historical developments written by a scientist, but Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum is such a work. Since the boom in environmental consciousness over the past three decades, innumerable volumes have been published on the effects of industrialized human societies on the global environment. Ruddiman's simple but startling hypothesis is to challenge the assumption that prior to the industrial revolution the impact of people was limited and localized. Rather, he argues, civilizations have been altering the climate of the planet in substantial ways for the last eight thousand years through large-scale changes in vegetation as agriculture spread in Africa and Asia, and then to most of the rest of the world by two thousand years ago. |
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Ruddiman is an earth scientist with a long career examining changes in the deep seas and continents, and here he makes use of the extensive records of temperature and atmosphere reconstructed from ice cores and marine sediments. His main argument is explained in eleven chapters that deal with natural climate cycles, the effect of greenhouse gases, and the evidence contained in ice cores, marine sediments, and other proxies for global climate change. Much of his argument rests on the differences between the present interglacial, that period of warmer than average temperatures of the last ten millennia in which civilizations and agriculture have flourished, and previous warm periods that have recurred at intervals of 100,000 years. Ruddiman observes that the greenhouses gases of methane and carbon dioxide exhibit anomalous behavior during the period of agriculture, and he attributes this to clearance and burning of woodland for agriculture, and the emissions of methane by the rice paddies of Asia. Together, he argues, these gases have protected the planet from the cooling expected from natural climatic cycles, essentially delaying the onset of the next ice age by some five millennia. This is circumstantial evidence that is nevertheless compelling and inherently controversial, and its implications for environmental management and energy use are discussed in a later chapter. |
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Of particular interest to historians are the more subtle environmental changes over the last two thousand years of recorded human history. Recent climate records are sufficiently detailed to discern changes in greenhouse gases throughout this period, but their fluctuating concentrations could not be easily explained. Ruddiman here draws on the work of historian William McNeill on epidemic occurrence and demonstrates an interesting syn-chronicity between greenhouse gas concentrations and the major pandemics in history, suggesting that the global climate may have been sensitive to substantial fluctuations in the human populations of Europe and Asia. |
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Ruddiman concludes the book with a discussion of recent global warming and future possibilities. With the benefits of a longer perspective on the potential effects of human beings on climate, Ruddiman echoes the warning of most environmentalists on the hazards of playing experiments with atmospheric gases. Some of this section does not add much that is new, but Ruddiman evidently felt the need to pre-empt arguments that "greenhouse gasses are our friends" that had apparently prevented a glaciation. |
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In general this book is absorbing and informative, synthesizing the present climate change debates and making complicated science accessible for humanities scholars. The well-drafted graphs and figures as well as the clear, non-technical language of the book make it suitable to instruct students of environmental history in some of the methods of environmental reconstruction. Ruddiman has produced a fine example of the benefits of combining history and science to achieve a greater understanding of the interaction between human society and the environment, which must be applauded and encouraged. |
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Jan Oosthoek is assistant professor of environmental history at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. |
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