In his latest book, The Earth Transformed: An Untold History, Oxford historian Peter Frankopan traverses a wide span, geographically and historically, to map the role of climate in the history of civilisation. Through the story of the rise and fall of kingdoms, empires and colonies, he argues that humanity’s current engagement with global warming isn’t new and the attempts at decoding the whims of climate processes, consequences of over-exploiting nature, controlling climate and ecological crises have been central to the concerns of thinkers and rulers for long.
In the introduction, you write that ‘The book will explain how our world has always been one of transformation, transition and change because outside the Garden of Eden, time doesn’t stand still.’ Historians have always been chronicling change and the various ages (stone, bronze, industrial, information) are witness to transformations humanity has wrought on Earth. What ‘untold’ aspects do you highlight?
Yes, historians have been chronicling change. The Vedic texts — like many of the first written records in different cultures — were in some ways about transformation, transition and change. My book is different for three reasons. First, it covers the natural history of the world from the creation of the Earth to the present day, so the chronological range is unusual. Second, it is a truly ‘global’ history, which means the focus is not just on Europe and Europeans, or on India and Indians, but on parts of the world that historians have often ignored completely — such as the Americas before Columbus, sub-Saharan Africa, Polynesia and Micronesia, and the steppes of Central Asia. Above all though, what makes it ‘untold’ is the fact that history has always been based on written texts and on archaeological finds. Today, however, we are living through a revolution in how we can understand the past thanks to leaps and bounds in biological sciences, plant sciences, statistical modelling, genomics and more. Historians have never been able to measure the genetic similarities of populations of the Indian subcontinent and Scandinavia; or rainfall levels in Angkor, the capital of the great Khmer empire; or the differences in rice strains and their adaptability to climatic shifts. Today we can; that means that the story of the past can be told in full technicolour, rather than dull monochrome.
Humans are considered a resilient species as they adapt to various ecological niches. However, this often results in them over-exploiting their surroundings before leaving for new pastures. Do you think such resilience is an admirable trait or, should we see it as a refusal to learn?
One of the problems is that we tend to over-prioritise humans’ innate resilience. Our species has been on this Earth for really quite a short period of time. If we take the first writing scripts as the start of ‘recorded history’ — meaning, when we can start to learn what our ancestors were thinking and thinking worthy of recording — then we make up 0.00001% of the time this planet has existed. To think in terms of innate resilience is to assume we can conquer evolution and that adaptability is not a problem for us. Biology suggests another set of answers. However, when we think about past adaptation, the tipping point has usually come because of settlements that have become victims of their own success: locations that are favourable either attract more settlers or enable demographic growth locally. This puts pressure on resources; and if those resources become exhausted because of over-exploitation or affected because of weather events, war, disease and so on, then large settlements can suddenly become very vulnerable.
The Earth Transformed: An Untold History
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From various epochs you have picked examples of an awareness among social elites of different societies of how human activities impacted weather patterns and climate change. What’s different about humanity’s current preoccupation with the impact of climate change?
People have always been worried about the weather, about climate and about climate change. The difference today is threefold. First, there are more of us on this planet than ever before — not least in India, which is not only the most populous country on Earth, but has the highest number of inhabitants ever. Second, the pace of climatic change is unusually fast. And third, we are playing a role in some of those changes because of how we live and behave. There have been many natural shifts in climate in the past; this time, we are involved in accelerating warming patterns.
Cities are usually centres of innovation, trade and creativity, but frequently end up being agents of destruction with their unceasing hunger for resources. Is it a lesson of history that for humanity to survive, the idea of a city must die or at least be radically transformed?
That is a great question. Cities are always inherently vulnerable to shocks — one reason why some of the great names from the past, like Harappa, Uruk and others, are places for tourists with interests in history, rather than remaining home to bustling populations. Our common ancestors understood this well, which was why thought and planning went into building infrastructure to support large and growing populations. In today’s world, rapid urbanisation means that both planning and investing ahead are difficult and can be expensive. So that can make city living a strain on all kinds of resources, not least natural ones. As a result, many cities today are extremely polluted and bring major health concerns. One report suggests that the inhabitants of Delhi breathe in air that is the equivalent of smoking two packets of cigarettes a day. Quite apart from the health concerns and risk to life, it affects work productivity as well as life expectancy, and puts a strain on healthcare. Clean cities is one of the projects I am working on – and the idea of making our urban spaces greener, more sustainable and less dangerous does not seem a bad idea to me.
You’ve written about how concerns about deforestation prompted colonial administrators to mark out forests as inviolate and exclude the indigenous communities that lived in them. However, the same administrator also sought out ways to ensure that commodities were forever at hand to feed consumption. Is this different from the present focus on tapping renewable energy sources, instead of fossil fuel, but not prescribing limits on consumption and economic growth?
We often make a strange equation when it comes to indigenous peoples because they are often looked down on both racially and in terms of their lifestyles. It is a very similar story with the nomadic peoples in the steppes of Central Asia. But typically, such peoples are very good guardians of the habitats they live in, treating its resources more sustainably than those who think they know better. The problem today is that we do not price things fairly or correctly, so we only pay for what something costs, rather than what it is actually worth. So, we over-exploit because there are short-term rewards for doing so. That is not the hardest problem in the world to fix; so I am optimistic this can be addressed without affecting economic growth. There are many examples of how consumption of water has been dramatically cut, for example, with no impact on growth. This can happen with clean energy, too.
Is humanity doomed to be at the mercy of the elements or would it be wise, as a species, to focus our energies on finding new habitable planets for survival?
Looking for new planets and other systems to live in because we have given up on this one would seem like the worst kind of response in some ways; it’s a bit like throwing away something because you think it’s no longer perfect. We are not doomed. In the coming decades, I am worried about nuclear escalation or mistakes, pandemic diseases, about impactors as well as solar activity and volcanoes. But the key when scared is to prepare properly. Regardless of where one lives on this planet today and regardless of political persuasion, the world of 2023 looks precarious because of the rise of China, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, AI and its capabilities, indebtedness of major states that makes them vulnerable to populism at best and implosion at worst, not to mention a host of other matters that might keep one awake at night. Planning ahead is far more valuable than spending time wide awake at night, trembling with fear.
