PLANET EARTH CHANGES US AS WE CHANGE IT: /78: Nature and Human History: The Earth Transformed: An Untold History Hardcover by Peter Frankopan (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 18 November 2024
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Earth-Transformed-Untold-History/dp/0525659161/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our current environmental crisis feels difficult to predict and understand. But climate change and its effects on us are not new. In a bold narrative that spans centuries and continents, Peter Frankopan argues that nature has always played a fundamental role in the writing of history. From the fall of the Moche civilization in South America that came about because of the cyclical pressures of El Niño to volcanic eruptions in Iceland that affected Egypt and helped bring the Ottoman empire to its knees, climate change and its influences have always been with us.
Frankopan explains how the Vikings emerged thanks to catastrophic crop failure, why the roots of regime change in eleventh-century Baghdad lay in the collapse of cotton prices resulting from unusual climate patterns, and why the western expansion of the frontiers in North America was directly affected by solar flare activity in the eighteenth century. Again and again, Frankopan shows that when past empires have failed to act sustainably, they have been met with catastrophe. Blending brilliant historical writing and cutting-edge scientific research, The Earth Transformedwill radically reframe the way we look at the world and our future.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI in the World with Peter Frankapan, professor at global history at Oxford University. |
| 0:10.5 | The new book is The Earth Transformed. |
| 0:12.6 | We come to 1870 to 1920, modern enough for us to recognize the products, but at the same time, rubber following cotton, rubber |
| 0:22.9 | trees. The other products of cocoa and tobacco have been commonplace for several hundred |
| 0:29.0 | years. However, we now look for nitrates for fertilizer. These are all English novels, and so I was |
| 0:35.6 | jotting down the professor provided Lord Jim for the nitrates of guano, Lord Jim, by Conrad. |
| 0:43.4 | But he also mentions whale oil, and I jot it in Herman Melville. |
| 0:48.0 | And, Professor, I mentioned to you that I, in anticipation of my conversation with you about your book, I went to the |
| 0:55.6 | sign of four, the second of the Sherlock Holmes stories, about a theft of diamonds and rubies |
| 1:03.1 | from a Maharaja in India. This is following the so-called mutiny of the mid-19th century. And it is surprising to |
| 1:13.0 | read Conan Doyle's interpretation of the world from the Thames' point of view, from Herschelak-Holm's |
| 1:19.4 | point of view, considering what you explicate in your presentation is how the British Empire |
| 1:26.2 | exploited and disdained and what at this point you'd have |
| 1:31.8 | to say damaged the cultures of so many peoples. And it was all in keeping with the power of the |
| 1:38.2 | empire in 1870. This was also true in the United States. It's also true in many European countries. |
| 1:45.5 | Is there a new appreciation for this now, Professor? |
| 1:48.2 | Is something happened? |
| 1:49.1 | Because I don't remember this in my 20th century education. |
| 1:52.8 | That's a lovely question. |
| 1:53.9 | John, I'm enjoying myself so much. |
| 1:55.6 | I can feel, as we're heading towards the late 19th century, |
| 1:58.5 | the tristess of a conversation sort of coming towards the twilight. |
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