Happy New Year to you all.

Has anyone read the book "A Green History of the World, The Environment and
the Collapse of Great Civilizations" by Clive Ponting? I would really like
to know what others think of this book since I somehow had never heard of it
and it has just displaced E.O. Wilson's "The Diversity of Life" as my #1
Must-Read book.

It a book that I always thought should have been written. And it turns out
that it has.

Like many books, it doesn't really say anything new as much as it pulls it
all together. And my conclusion...There is NO hope! (But that's not a good
enough reason not to keep trying.) Rereading the accounts of the passenger
pigeons, and this little quote: "The scale of the continuing destruction to
amuse the crowds across the Roman empire, year after year, for centuries,
can be guessed at from the fact that 9,000 captured animals were killed
during the 100 day celebration of the dedication of the Coliseum in Rome and
11,000 were slain to mark Trajan's conquest of the new province of Dacia. By
the early centuries AD, the elephant, rhinoceros and zebra were extinct in
north Africa, the hippopotamus in the lower Nile and the tiger in north
Persia and Mesopotamia."

It is still in print, paperback from Penguin Books.

If you've read it, email me. If you haven't, then be sure you do and then
email me.

Thanks.
MJ Hatfield

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