This article is taken from the June 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10.

What is History, and what is it for? The first historians aimed to see that “the deeds of humanity should not be forgotten in time”, as the Greek Herodotus put it. They intended to provide an account of use to future generations: “a possession for all time” in the words of Herodotus’s successor Thucydides. History is about and for human beings; the disciplinary boundary between History and Natural History is very ancient. 

A new book by Peter Frankopan seeks to change this. This is the “untold history” of the natural world and humanity’s place within it. His aim is to “reinsert climate back into the story of the past as the underlying, crucial and much overlooked theme in global history”. Ironically, what makes this book so timely is the contemporary conviction that human beings are in fact responsible for the current “climate crisis”. Today’s politicians, as modern Cnuts or Caligulas, must find some way to halt and harness the winds and tide. In contemplating these challenges, Frankopan hopes to provide a new History from which to learn the lessons of the past.

The resulting book is a truly universal history. The narrative progresses from the dawn of time to the present day and encompasses all continents. It is a mighty tome: weighing in at 695 pages (sans 200 pages of footnotes available online), this is one for a sturdy desk, not the bus or beach. It is also a remarkable work of scholarship; it would be surprising if anyone can read a single chapter without learning something new. Undoubtedly, then, this is a big book, and a very good book, with pretensions to be a great book.

Does The Earth Transformed live up to its aim to tell an “untold history”? Not quite. Whilst it is a timely study, historians have long looked to climatic factors (perhaps over eagerly) to explain historical events. Throughout Frankopan tries to balance a desire to tell an urgent and radical narrative with his native instincts towards scholarly nuance and caution. To his credit, nuance and caution mostly win out. 

Climate change did not in fact, we read, kill Cleopatra, nor did Ghengis Khan reduce CO₂ emissions in an orgy of killing. The Little Ice Age (a term first coined in 1939) was no such thing, but a label misapplied to distinct localised dips in temperature clustered between 1550 and 1800. Frankopan aims to write a history that is not just of cities and civilisations, but that is in effect what he has produced. Even nomads out on the steppes depend on urban markets. 

Differing conclusions may be drawn from the data Frankopan assembles. His overall message is that homo sapiens faces an existential threat. The dire consequences of changes in the climate are well documented. What is most surprising, however, is that it is the cooling of the earth, rather than its warming, that has proved most destructive. Periods of human flourishing have tended to coincide with warmer temperatures, such as the Roman Climate Optimum. 

Another potential surprise is that anxiety about climate change is universal in all eras that witness such shifts. Mankind’s capacity to adapt is nonetheless remarkable. “Current projected rises of 1.5 — 2 °C”, Frankopan observes, “look paltry compared to the very many and regular double-digit rises and falls” of prehistory. 

Peasant farmers could previously grow old without ever tasting meat

What is frightening in the modern world is that our impact on the environment is much greater than ever before. No one knows what that means for our future. Yet Man’s previous successes against the elements provide some grounds for hope.

Frankopan muses on a return “to paradise”: the Eden lost not by Adam’s sin but through urbanisation and globalisation, trends which he believes have been carried to dangerous lengths. Such a paradise, however, does not exist in this world. Whilst Frankopan may not like it, the superabundance of the modern supermarket is probably the closest we are going to get. 

On a planet where, even in southern Europe in the 20th century, peasant farmers could previously grow old without ever tasting meat, the mass-produced burger is an underappreciated modern miracle. Whilst the future costs of climate change for the world’s poor are duly noted, Frankopan barely acknowledges the present benefits of cheap food and cheap fuel. Is it likely that the world’s democracies will give up the latter to mitigate the former? Not really. 

Even if Frankopan’s paradise were to be realised, few would enter it willingly. It would in truth be a verdant hell. Cities were made for people to live well and attain “the good life”. The larger markets and greater possibilities for exchange provided by cities make life better, with greater opportunities for intellectual, spiritual and material enrichment. The current mass migration (especially in Africa) of rural communities to the world’s megacities is testament to the fact that humans, if given the choice, want to live in cities. Salvation for humanity, if it comes at all, must come from cities and the technological advances they foster. 

It is true that many of the immigrants to cities are unlikely to benefit from such a move. Most are forced to inhabit crowded and unsanitary slums: as in any gold rush, the immediate fruits of capitalism are simply too few to go around. This testifies to a constant in human nature: we are more often enticed by the slender promise of success than we are deterred by the vast probability of failure. We routinely accept fearful risks with remarkable insouciance. 

This will to better ourselves may be part of the reason for our species’ success. It also explains why we are now “living beyond our means”, as Frankopan has it. Want may yet teach us frugality, but this can hardly be learned in times of plenty. As he demonstrates, this is how we have always lived: populations expand only to be caught in Malthusian traps; the fat years bring growth, the lean ones starvation. 

Left to themselves, it is probable that human beings will find a way to survive whatever challenges come. If governments are to force humans to live in a way contrary to their nature, this will require centralised planning on a terrifying scale. As we have seen with the response to Covid-19, half measures by governments prove ineffective, whilst full measures, such as China’s zero-Covid policy, entail appalling constraints on human freedom. Utopian schemes to correct human nature are, as Hayek put it, the “road to serfdom”. History (though perhaps not Frankopan’s “untold history”) tells us that such experiments do not end well. 

Frankopan concludes by admitting frankly that the world in which we live is a terrifying one. This is true, but it was ever thus. We may in fact live at the best possible time to be alive. To those suffering from climate anxiety, I say carpe diem, seize the day. Enjoy life whilst you walk under the sun. Tomorrow you may join the dead.