Climate Change and the Health of Nations
Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations
Anthony McMichael
Also available as:
$102.95 AUD
- ISBN:
- 9780190262952
- Published:
- 24 Jan 2017
- Availability:
- Print on demand
While natural climate change has occurred throughout human history, and populations mostly have adapted to its vicissitudes, we have now entered the Anthropocene era of rapid and perilous change caused by human activity. Tony McMichael, a renowned epidemiologist and a pioneer in explaining the impacts of climate change on population health, is the ideal person to tell the story of climate and human history. In his magisterial Climate Change and the Health of Nations, he presents a sweeping and authoritative analysis of how human societies have been shaped by climate events.
McMichael shows how the environment has vast direct and indirect repercussions for human health and welfare. After providing an overview of the dynamics of global warming and the greenhouse effect, McMichael takes us on a tour of the entirety of human history, through the lens of climate change. From the very beginning of our species some five million years ago, human biology has evolved to adapt to cooling temperatures, new food sources, and changing geography. As societies began to form, they too evolved in relation to their environments, most notably with the development of agriculture eleven thousand years ago. McMichael dubs this mankind’s ‘Faustian bargain,’ because the prosperity and comfort that an agrarian society provides relies on the assumption that the environment will largely remain stable; in order for agriculture to succeed, environmental conditions must be just right, which McMichael refers to as the ‘Goldilocks phenomenon.’ Now, with global warming, humans are paying the Faustian price for our massive changes to the Earth’s environment. Climate-related upheavals are a common thread running through history, and they inevitably lead to conflict and destruction. McMichael correlates them to the four horsemen of the apocalypse: famine, pestilence, war, and conquest. Indeed, they have precipitated food shortages, the spread of infectious diseases, and even civilizational collapse. We can see this in familiar historical events-the barbarian invasions of Rome, the Black Death in medieval Europe, the Irish potato famine, maybe even the Ten Plagues - that had their roots in natural climate change.
Why devote so much analysis to the past, when the terrifying future of climate change is already here? The story of mankind’s survival in the face of an unpredictable and unstable climate, and of the terrible toll that climate change can take, in fact could not be more important as we face the realities of a warming planet. This sweeping magnum opus is not only a rigorous, innovative, and fascinating exploration of how the climate affects the human condition, but also a clarion call to recognize our species’ utter reliance on the earth’s support systems.
Key Features:
- Written by a pioneering epidemiologist who developed the connection between epidemiology and global environmental change
- A new and important perspective on climate change, one of the most pressing issues of our era
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
1: Introduction
2: A Restless Climate
3: Climatic choreography of health and disease
4: From Cambrian Explosion to first farmers: how climate made us human
5: Spread of farming, new diseases, and rising civilisations: Mid-Holocene Optimum, 6,000 BCE to 3,000 BCE.
6: Eurasian Bronze Age: unsettled climatic times
7: Romans, Mayans and Anasazi: the Classical Optimum to droughts in the Americas, 300 BCE to 1250 CE
8: Little Ice Age: Europe, China and beyond
9: Weather extremes, famine and disease in modern times (1800- 2000 CE)
10: The Holocene climate: fickle friend and foe
11: Facing the Future
Anthony McMichael
Anthony John McMichael (1942-2014) was Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. Previously he was Professor of Epidemiology at the ANU and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Anthony John McMichael (1942-2014), was Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University. He previously was Professor of Epidemiology at the ANU and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
"In Climate Change and the Health of Nations, the late Anthony McMichael connects the dots, rewinding the tape of history, in the words of historian Geoffrey Parker, to examine how climatic shifts have affected the evolution of human beings and their societies and the health of populations." -- Jose Siri (United Nations University, International Institute for Global Health), Population and Development Review, Vol. 44.1
"Urgent in tone... Offering hindsight as well as foresight, McMichael makes a strong argument for sustainability."--Publishers Weekly
"This is a book to inspire thoughts of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse-famine, plague, war and death-and how we rarely stop to realize that they ride on the winds of environmental change... Those who scoff at climatologists' predictions should take a look at historians' accounts."--Maclean's
"The book's goal is not to make predictions but to motivate change, which McMichael does by bringing into focus humanity's sensitivity to fluctuations in the natural climate system throughout history."--Science Magazine
"[Climate Change and the Health of Nations] lucidly, and at times lyrically, chronicles 200,000 years of human history through a climate lens."--Nature
"[McMichael] deftly traces the great environmental 'undercurrents that shaped the fates of civilisations, their cultures, ideologies, and power structures'. He calls for an extraordinary civilisational response. McMichael is optimistic about the world's 'mega-problem'. He tells the story for the first time of 'the historical interplay between climate change, human health, disease, and survival'. It is a magnificent treatise. It demands our attention. And action."--The Lancet, Richard Horton
"The writing is clear, unadorned, and engaging. The scholarly reach is breathtaking... This splendid book is a call to action... And if we are successful, as we must be, Tony McMichael's contributions will live on as a vital part of that legacy."--EcoHealth, Howard Frumkin
"This sober, forceful history anticipates the potential cataclysms to come, in a world that, because of man-made emissions, is warming at an unprecedented rate."--New Yorker
"Not just another climate polemic, this is a grand (not grandiose) examination of the interplay between global climate, civilization, agriculture, populations, economies, and policies, in a broad historical framework... An invaluable resource."--CHOICE Reviews