Latest / The Smart Cookies podcast / How a strain of rice changed the course of human history FOREVER | Sunil Amrith

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How a strain of rice changed the course of human history FOREVER | Sunil Amrith · The Smart Cookies podcast

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Sunil Amrit is the Renu and Anand Dhawan Professor
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of History and Professor in the School of the
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Environment at Yale University. He's the author
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of four books and a recipient of multiple awards,
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including a MacArthur Genius Fellowship. His
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latest book is called The Burning Earth, An Environmental
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History of the Last 500 Years. Professor Amrit,
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welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having
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me. I'm delighted to be here. Now, I've had many
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historians on the podcast and the topics varied
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from the Black Death to Hitler's underwear moment,
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crisis, whatever. But up until I saw an interview
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with you, I actually had no idea that such a
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thing as environmental history even existed,
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which probably says a lot about my or our detachment
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from nature. But we'll get to that a bit later
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on. Now, interestingly enough. You don't begin
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the story of how humans began impacting or transforming
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the environment with the advent of agriculture
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in, what was it, 10 ,000 BCE? Mesopotamia? Something
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like that? I hope I'm not way off. But rather
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you begin in China about a thousand years ago.
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Why is that? I think you're absolutely right
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that I could have started the story much earlier.
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And in a way, I start the Burning Earth mid -flow,
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so to speak. And partly I wanted to do that because,
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as you'll have seen, the majority of the Burning
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Earth is really quite a modern history. And so
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in terms of how much to stretch the story, I
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thought what I would do is I would start with
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what I see as a major point of acceleration and
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inflection. Within this much longer history,
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and we can indeed take this back to the dawn
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of settled agriculture, as does my late great
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colleague Jim Scott in his wonderful book Against
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the Grain, which really does sort of tell that
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much, much longer history of humans on Earth.
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But I think starting in China a thousand years
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ago makes sense for the story I want to tell,
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because what happens then is this one strain
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of rice, what we now know as Champa rice, which
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came from central Vietnam, allows a doubling
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of the acreage of land under rice in southern
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China within just a few decades. And this transforms
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how much human life can be sustained in concentration.
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Over the course of a couple of centuries after
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that innovation, China experiences significant
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population growth. That population growth is,
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I think, of world historical significance because
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it's what allows China to really sort of emerge
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as the center of the global economy. And it was
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that wealth, of course, which, you know, led
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the Europeans from the far fringes of Eurasia
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on their ocean voyages in the first place. So
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I do see that as a sort of particularly... important
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moment of not fundamental change, but of acceleration.
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So what happens when this particular strain of
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rice makes it into China a thousand years ago?
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Why is that particular strain of rice and not
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some other strain of rice, which causes this
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massive spurt of growth? There's two parts to
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that answer. One is that that particular strain
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of rice is fast ripening. And it is very likely,
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we don't have all of the details, but it's very
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likely to have been cultivated and bred in an
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artisanal way by farmers, you know, bit by bit.
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And its initial arrival in China was very likely
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informal along the trading routes across the
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South China Sea, moving from farm to farm by
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word of mouth. But the pivotal transformation
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comes when the Chinese empire, the emperor. orders
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30 ,000 bushels of the seed and then actually
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instructs local officials to distribute it. An
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early version of agricultural extension officers.
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And this is being distributed with intention
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and with information. You start to get these
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elaborate agricultural manuals, for example,
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around that time, which instruct farmers on how
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to use the seed. And so. It could have been other
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strains of rice. I think there is always an element
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of contingency to this. But the particular properties
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of this strain, together with the fact that this
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becomes a matter of imperial policy, is what
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I think comes together to facilitate that massive
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expansion. And that expansion, of course, is
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not without its losers as well as its winners.
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Indigenous groups in southern China are being
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displaced. by the arrival of settled farmers.
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Many of them are migrants from further north.
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There is large -scale deforestation, which allows
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for the planting of the fields. And the new strain
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is also hardier, so it can be cultivated in areas
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which would previously have been seen as unsuitable
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for rice, particularly hillsides. And that's
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when you start to get these terraces, which we
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so associate now with rice agriculture. Okay,
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but that sounds like quite a dramatic... sort
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of intervention into the environment. So I'm
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imagining, is this a sustainable practice or
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not really? I mean, you are changing the environment
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quite a bit, aren't you? I would say it is a
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transformative practice. It is sustainable in
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a sense that some later forms of environmental
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transformation are not sustainable in the sense
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that this does not lead to a long -term deterioration
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of environmental conditions. That's one of the
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distinctive things. Except through deforestation.
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So I think that is the key thing. There is large
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scale deforestation that happens as a result
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of this. But the rice fields in and of themselves,
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one of the things about rice soil is that soils
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planted with rice do not deteriorate over time,
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unlike many other crops above all wheat, which
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we know very well, and even more so a crop like
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sugar. And we'll come to that, I'm sure, later
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in the story. But in that sense, what you have
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is a sort of long lived rice ecosystem, which
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is a kind of monoculture. But at the same time,
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it fosters certain kinds of life, much less than
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a sort of so -called pristine forest ecosystem
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would have done. But nevertheless, there is an
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interdependence between rice soils, species of
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wetland birds, other wetland creatures. There's
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a very close relationship between rice and silk
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cultivation in southern China, for example, which
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leads to a sort of long term. ecology and in
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that sense it's sustainable but it doesn't come
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you know without massive transformation and indeed
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loss and that loss is loss of forest land but
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also the loss of the kinds of lifestyles that
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came from those who did not practice settled
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agriculture okay this is maybe a question an
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anachronistic question that's coming from somebody
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who lives um today But why didn't they just go
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on and on if it was such a massive success? And
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if they experienced this population boom and
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urban centers developing and so forth, how come
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they were kind of self -contained? Why didn't
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they just cut out all the woods and keep going?
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Or did they like... It's a very naive question.
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Or maybe they encountered the nomadic step or
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something. I don't know. I think it's far from
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a naive question. I think it's a very interesting
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question. And I think the answer is actually
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is politics. What happens is, of course, that
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the wealth of southern China is one of the things
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which attracts what becomes the Mongol Empire.
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And there is a period of intense and devastating
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warfare that happens along the course of the
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Mongol conquests from the steppe, the establishment
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of the Yuan dynasty. at the heart of the mongol
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empire this is another place i start the burning
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earth is a pretty stark environmental conflict
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between those mongol leaders who wanted to basically
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turn china into grazing land and those who thought
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no i think we need to foster this amazing productive
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settled agriculture that we find here and um
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The leader of the UN dynasty, Kublai Khan, sided
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with those who wanted to work with what China
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already was, which was a vast agrarian empire,
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against his own brother, for example, who believed
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that a kind of ecological transformation of China
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to turn it into something more like the steppe
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was what the Mongol Empire was trying to foster.
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So there's this battle at the heart. But the
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other thing I'd say, and the answer to, you know,
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why does this not just expand infinitely, is...
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The security that this agricultural revolution
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in China brings is a marginal security. We're
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not talking about a transformation that liberates
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farmers from seasons of drought and dearth. We're
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talking about a margin of safety. above bare
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subsistence, which is transformative. Let's not
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deny that this is totally transformative in what
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it is possible for a human life to be. But nevertheless,
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it's a thin margin. And that margin, when you
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start to get, for example, significant episodes
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of unseasonably cold weather, which you have
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coinciding with the collapse of the UN dynasty
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in the 14th century, there is not... the resilience
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to last more than a few seasons of that. Okay.
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You mentioned the Mongols and I can't get past
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that. Here's a question one won't hear often
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when talking about the Mongol history. And that's
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probably before the time of Kublai Khan. What's
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the connection between grass and the expansion
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of the Mongol Empire? So there's some really
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fascinating work coming out in climate history
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now. Niccolo de Cosma and others have shown that.
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First, let's take a step back and remember that
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on one estimate, one in four horses in the world
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was in the Mongol army. One in four horses in
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the world is estimated to have been serving in
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the Mongol army. The very essence of Mongol power
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is that horse mounted cavalry. And. In that sense,
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grass is the literal root of Mongol power. And
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what we have evidence of is a period of succession
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of wet years on the steppe, coinciding with the
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rise of Genghis Khan of the Mongol Empire. And
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in a very simple material sense, that allowed
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the grass that the horses grazed on to grow more
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rapidly than usual. And in a very... prosaic,
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but ultimately dramatic sense sort of enables
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the sustenance of the horse populations, which
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then becomes sort of the very heart of the Mongols'
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military conquest, which stretched all the way
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from Eastern Europe to China. So what the grass
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was functioning as like an express highway in
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the medieval era, or why is grass so important?
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Grass was functioning just exactly like that.
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Partly horses consume... a lot uh partly the
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step does become a highway i mean that metaphor
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is used a lot the kind of step highway that allows
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for these sort of rapid lightning attacks that
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the mongol forces become notorious for um and
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i think we need to be careful because clearly
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there is a material relationship between climate
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ecology and the nature of mongol military power
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but this is not a sort of monocausal explanation
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there is so much else that is going on to do
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with the structure of power within the mongol
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empire to do with the ideologies that legitimize
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mongol rule to do with even the cosmology of
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the mongol empire which sees divinity embodied
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in different animals and indeed in the sort of
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grass step itself and sort of wide open skies
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so there's cultural factors here there are uh
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there's military technological innovations to
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do with with uh innovations in weaponry but yes
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some of this is about grass some of this is about
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the step some of this is about ecology okay but
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would it be um fair to say that without um without
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grass no mongol empire at least not in in the
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form that that did materialize Yes, I think it
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would. Okay. Well, that's pretty mind -blowing.
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That's crazy. I'm sorry. But yeah. We often hear
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about Genghis Khan and about the Mongol army
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and the conquest and all that stuff, but never
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about the grass. The grass is important. The
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grasslands are actually just of fundamental importance
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in the history of all of Eurasia. Right. It makes
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total sense. And it's not just the Mongols. It's
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all of these mounted invaders from Central Asia
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who eventually also take power in India, as the
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Mughal Empire does later on. Right. If we go
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back to China, you said that China's wealth,
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which sprung up from this expanded rice cultivation,
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began attracting adventurous merchants from elsewhere,
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particularly Westerners who were on the hunt
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for riches. But before we tackle that, I wanted
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to ask, why would people risk such a dangerous
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endeavor? Were they that desperate or just greedy
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or a combination of both? I suppose maybe my
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question is this. What were the conditions for
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an average person, an average peasant farmer
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in medieval Europe like at the time? So let's
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take one step back because long before Europeans...
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arrived in Chinese markets, Arab traders were
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already there. So if you look at the commerce,
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the seaborne commerce through the Indian Ocean,
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there's evidence of trade directly between the
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Middle East and China going back to the 8th or
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9th century of the Common Era. A lot of that
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is then also going through India, through Southeast
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Asia, and you have the rise of the Southeast
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Asian port cities as well. And in some sense,
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Europeans are very late to the game. And when
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the Europeans first understand China's riches,
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it's not through the ocean voyage, of course,
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it's initially over land. We think of the famous
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travelogue of Marco Polo. And of course, many
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questions have been raised about exactly where
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he went and exactly how far he traveled. But
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the point is that it was through texts like that,
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through these early European travelers who actually
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traveled through the Mongol Empire. Which is
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crazy. How long would that take you? I'm sorry.
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Months. I mean, some of these were years long.
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I mean, if you look at the famous voyage, not
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from Europe, but from North Africa, Ibn Battuta,
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that takes some decades. And he writes, of course,
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this amazing travelogue of his entire journey
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through what he saw as the Islamic world, the
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Dar al -Islam. But Europeans also are starting
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to write about their experiences. And there is
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a mixture, of course, of rumour and fantasy and
15:44
experience that's sort of feeding into this.
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But one of the really striking things which historians
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have found is when they looked at the papers,
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the private papers of the man who had become
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known as Christopher Columbus, he is annotating
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these travelogues. including Marco Polo's. And
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he's highlighting the mention of riches, of gold,
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of treasure. And this brings me to the direct
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question that you asked us, which is Europe has,
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of course, been devastated in the 14th century
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by the Black Death. And you said you've had guests
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talking about the Black Death on Smart Cookies.
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And that's an important part of the story. By
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decimating the European population, There are
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ways in which paradoxically the Black Death actually
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empowers ordinary workers in Europe because there's
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such a shortage of labor. Yeah, he actually talked
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about that. Yeah. But at the same time, there
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is a sense of Europe being isolated from the
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world, particularly after the fall of the Mongol
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Empire. And of course, there is extensive intra
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-European conflict, which eventually is what
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leads those on the far... western fringes of
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Europe, the Iberian Peninsula, to start to seek
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an oceanic route to exactly those riches. And
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this is a moment where the European elite, the
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aristocracy, had already come to highly value
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fine spices, which at this point grew in only
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a very, very few places in the world. And often
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they didn't know where that was. My colleague
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at Yale, Paul Friedman, has wrote a brilliant
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book called Out of the East. He's a medieval
17:26
European historian in which he argues that actually
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India, the word India in the European imagination,
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the medieval period, just meant somewhere out
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there where these amazing delicacies come from,
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these spices. And it was through travelogues,
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it was through expanding knowledge of the world,
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it was through early maps and cartography that
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something more specific started to sort of emerge
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in the European imagination as to where these
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spices might be coming from. Okay, so we're tilting
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towards greed more than desperation, I suppose?
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I think it becomes greed. I think initially it
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is a feeling of there being this world out there
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that might, partly in fantasy, provide... all
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the riches of one's dreams. Partly it's religion.
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So much of this is bound up with the sort of
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intensifying conflict between Christianity and
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Islam in Europe. And those two things are very
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closely bound up. So when you start to get all
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these references to gold, partly into that is
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read biblical references, but partly there is
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a sense that European kingdoms need that gold
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in order to be able to fight holy war. And so
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I think... So greed plus a religious motivation,
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kind of crusading mentality, these all come together,
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I think, in a kind of uneasy mix. And sometimes
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they're pulling in different directions, of course,
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and sometimes they're sort of jointly propelling
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these adventures. If you go back to my original
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question, because I always imagine life in medieval
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Europe, when I do imagine it, my mind always
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goes into two opposite but equally dramatic directions.
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One is... We talked about the complete dystopia
19:20
of the Black Death, like, you know, Mordor. And
19:24
the other one is this idyllic peasant life that
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you can read about maybe in Tolstoy's novels,
19:29
which was another era, of course, but still pretty
19:32
much like a feudal system or whatever. So peasants
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working hard in the fields, but also enjoying
19:37
the abundant fruits of their labor, which they
19:40
did surrounded by the stunning romantic scenes
19:43
of nature. It's never something in between. That's
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why I... I mean, and as with all of these associations
19:52
that we have, you know, one can probably see
19:55
elements of truth in each of these images that
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we construct. But peasant life in every part
20:03
of the world at this point, of course, was deeply
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risky, often violent and deeply precarious. And
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that goes for medieval China as much as medieval
20:15
Europe. Medieval China, medieval Europe and Mesoamerican
20:17
societies too. Right, of course, of course. Professor,
20:21
what was the difference between wheat and rice
20:24
cultivation, especially as it pertained to nature,
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but also in the different ways these two grains
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shaped societies? The differences are perhaps
20:36
more... more fundamental than we might imagine.
20:39
And the first scholar to point this out was Francesca
20:43
Bray, who was writing in the 1980s. Francesca
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Bray is a wonderful historian and anthropologist,
20:48
works on China, but then more broadly started
20:50
to work on rice. And in the 80s, she wrote this
20:53
really interesting book on the rice economies
20:55
of Asia, in which she ends, there's a sort of
20:58
coda to that book, in which she really sort of
21:01
spells out the difference between rice and wheat
21:03
and suggests that We often think, of course,
21:06
about sort of fundamental divergence between
21:08
European and Asian societies. And for most of
21:12
the 20th century, there were a whole lot of assumptions
21:15
that basically, for want of a better word, culture
21:18
is what describes and helps to explain these
21:21
differences. And she suggests, without necessarily
21:24
disputing that there are cultural differences
21:26
that emerge, there's some fundamental properties
21:28
of the staple crop. which might help us to understand
21:31
different social organizations. And one of the
21:34
big differences is rice needs more labor to begin
21:38
with. Because water is so important to the rice
21:41
crop. And so there is something very, very intensive
21:44
about what it is to build a rice field. And I
21:47
use the word build quite intentionally because
21:49
there's an element of construction involved.
21:52
The timing is absolutely crucial when it comes
21:54
to rice, more so than with most other staple
21:57
crops of exactly what level of water you need
22:00
for the crop to flourish. And that takes a lot
22:02
of artisanal skill. It takes a lot of knowledge.
22:06
Rice soils. tend to be very wet and boggy by
22:14
definition. And this has tended even to this
22:17
day to resist mechanization. So that is one big
22:22
part of the difference. Another part of the difference
22:24
is that you need to keep much less of a rice
22:29
crop for seed for future harvest than you do
22:31
for wheat. In that way, rice is a more efficient
22:34
crop. But the big differences that we're starting
22:37
to point towards is that for rice cultivation,
22:41
it doesn't make sense to continually expand one's
22:44
land holdings. And actually, this goes back to
22:46
the earlier question you were asking me, Zaza,
22:48
perhaps about why doesn't it just keep going?
22:50
There isn't necessarily an advantage to a larger
22:55
state. when it comes to rice because of the kind
22:58
of labor and skill that it takes and because
23:00
there isn't an advantage to mechanization. Whereas
23:04
with wheat in Europe, what you have is the rise
23:08
of what we now consider to be a sort of feudal
23:10
economy. And some of that is about the economies
23:12
of scale that come with using the moldboard plow,
23:17
for example, to plow these wheat fields, which
23:24
make it more effective and more efficient to
23:26
have larger holdings you need more of the crop
23:29
for seed which again sort of uh there's an impetus
23:32
to expand one's holdings um so Again, without
23:36
being deterministic, because, of course, there
23:38
are so many choices and decisions that individual
23:41
societies make. And it's not as if all wheat
23:43
growing or all rice growing societies are the
23:46
same or have the same institutions. Far from
23:48
it. And I think we need to attend to those differences.
23:50
But at some very macro, big picture, broad brush
23:54
level, I think those differences are certainly
23:57
interesting and instructive. I listened to one
24:01
of your recent interviews and you said something
24:03
extremely fascinating. You said that of all the
24:06
technologies that transform the possibilities
24:09
of life on Earth, the portable firearm looms
24:12
larger than we've acknowledged. Wow. Can you
24:16
unpack that a little bit? Why are guns, if we
24:19
compare them to, I don't know, bows, such a dramatic
24:22
invention? Thank you for bringing that up. I
24:28
think for me, that was the single most unexpected
24:31
realization that I came to when I was writing
24:33
this book. That was not an insight that I began
24:35
with. And the more I was looking into, particularly
24:38
the history of the 19th century, the more I realized
24:41
that the capacity to inflict destruction that
24:47
comes from portable firearms, and of course,
24:49
this is both animal killing and human killing,
24:52
is out of proportion to any other single innovation
24:56
in technology in the technology of violence that
24:59
one had seen up to this point. And I think the
25:01
place where you really see that just manifest
25:03
is in the American West. And there are all of
25:06
these accounts of large parties of hunters with
25:12
some of the earliest sort of easily portable
25:14
firearms, many of which were manufactured right
25:16
here in my home city of New Haven, Connecticut.
25:18
I'm sort of out of my window as I speak to you.
25:21
I'm looking at the scene of what was the Eli
25:24
Whitney Armory. and then the Winchester Small
25:27
Arms Corporation, which John Wayne described
25:30
as the gun that won the West. Also here in New
25:34
Haven, Connecticut, Springfield, Massachusetts.
25:36
And you have these accounts of parties of hunters
25:39
going on the newly constructed railroads into
25:43
the West and literally decimating millions and
25:48
millions of bison. Those pictures, right? With
25:51
like skulls or was it carcasses? Mountains of
25:54
them. And then like one. one stupid guy standing
25:57
in front of them with like a rifle or something
25:59
it looks absurd and and yet for me that eventually
26:04
sort of i started to see particularly you know
26:07
we'll talk about this in a minute perhaps but
26:09
as we then look to the 20th century and the argument
26:12
that i make in the book that actually warfare
26:14
is a major driver of our planetary crisis if
26:18
we want to call it that i think we need to read
26:20
that story back to the 19th century and see that
26:23
just the capacity to cause destruction that the
26:26
portable firearm gives, as you say, one guy or
26:31
a small band of people is a step change. I'm
26:37
sure of that. Okay, you mentioned it, so we got
26:42
to go there. We're obviously skipping past the
26:43
entire historical epochs, but I really want us
26:47
to have a chance to talk about the great calamities
26:48
of the 20th century, namely the two world wars.
26:52
In school, in textbooks, in popular histories,
26:55
in documentaries, we always hear about the massive
26:57
casualties. We always hear about the atrocities
27:00
that were committed naturally, the razed cities
27:02
and so forth. However, we never, and I really
27:05
mean never, hear about the impact a truly planetary
27:10
war has on the environment. Yeah. And here too,
27:16
I think this is something that became more and
27:18
more important to the Burning Earth. as i was
27:20
doing the research and the writing initially
27:22
i was going to deal with both of the world wars
27:25
in half of one chapter and and as you know now
27:28
between them they take a chapter region about
27:30
80 pages of the book can we talk about each of
27:33
them a little bit we can talk about each of them
27:35
separately um absolutely um first of all i i
27:38
think we quite rightly and understandably emphasize
27:42
the colossal human suffering that both of the
27:44
wars and particularly the second world war perhaps
27:46
brought And I think that telling the environmental
27:49
story is actually not an alternative to that.
27:53
It's absolutely entwined with the human suffering.
27:55
And I think that's the point that I want to make,
27:58
is that both of the wars accelerate this twinned
28:02
capacity to cause both human suffering and environmental
28:06
harm. And the First World War, if we start there,
28:08
it is really the first conflict. that has a truly
28:14
global impact, first and foremost, in its search
28:18
for mineral and other natural resources. And
28:22
this is clear from the very beginning of the
28:24
war. This is clear in the minds of planners on
28:26
both sides, that their tentacles need to reach
28:29
onto literally every continent in order to make
28:32
this war, which has been called by Tim Mitchell
28:35
the first carbon -fueled war, the first major
28:38
industrial war, though some would say maybe the
28:39
American Civil War can be seen as the first major
28:42
industrial war. But the First World War, in terms
28:44
of its impact, in terms of where it's drawing
28:46
its resources from, is truly global. It reaches
28:50
every continent. We know now that it also reaches
28:54
every continent in terms of the human consequences,
28:58
particularly in terms of now we know just how
29:02
important Asian and African soldiers are to the
29:04
fighting, even when the fighting has taken place
29:06
primarily in Europe. But if we expand our perspective
29:09
further, we can see that in terms of the demand
29:12
for natural resources, it's a global war. Secondly,
29:17
I think it has a global imaginative effect in
29:20
the sense that it brings to light an unprecedented
29:25
capacity for human beings to destroy. And I think
29:31
there's one small example I'll give you that
29:34
I think captures that. The first year of the
29:37
war, David Lloyd George, who was at that time
29:41
the Minister for Munitions, but who goes on to
29:44
become Prime Minister of Britain, he gives a
29:46
speech in which he's trying to describe the war.
29:49
And all of the metaphors he reaches for are metaphors
29:53
of natural disasters. He calls it a cyclone.
29:55
He calls it an earthquake. And it's as if only
29:58
the power of nature would be enough to capture
30:02
just how destructive this war was being. Yet
30:05
by the end of the war, in fact, the order of
30:07
that metaphor had completely reversed. You have
30:10
a team of meteorologists working in Bergen in
30:14
Norway, led by Wilhelm Bjerknes, and they come
30:17
to understand some of the biggest climatic forces
30:22
acting. They're studying how mid -latitude cyclones
30:26
develop. and they changed the order of the metaphor
30:30
they call them as we still call them today weather
30:32
fronts and fronts is based on the image of contending
30:37
armies in the trenches and so it is as if that
30:40
by the end of the war it is no longer the power
30:43
of nature that gives us a metaphor for how destructive
30:45
the war is it's the power of human armies that
30:48
give us a metaphor for the most powerful possible
30:50
atmospheric forces and so i think that's a small
30:53
but quite revealing example of what the First
30:56
World War does in this field of ideas. Of course,
30:58
the dawn of chemical warfare is really important.
31:02
Peter Sloterdijk, the German philosopher, wrote
31:05
about this quite a long time ago, suggesting
31:06
that the use of poison gas at Ypres was a turning
31:10
point in human life on Earth, because it's a
31:12
moment where the air itself, the fundamental
31:15
element which keeps us alive, is weaponized.
31:19
It's deadly now. Exactly. Wow. In the Second
31:23
World War? The Second World War, of course, intensifies
31:28
through its technological innovations, both life
31:34
-enhancing and life -destroying. And I think
31:36
that doubleness is what's crucial. Life -enhancing?
31:39
That surprised me. I didn't think you would say
31:42
that. Life enhancing and life destroying. By
31:45
life enhancing, I mean all of the innovations
31:47
in medicine that you start to get. All of the
31:49
ways in which particularly allied forces managed
31:51
to protect their own bodies from the battlefield.
31:56
I'm talking about DDT. I'm talking about antibiotics.
31:58
I'm talking about all the technologies which
32:01
after the war, of course, do find civilian uses
32:04
to enhance life. And of course, going along with
32:07
that is a step change in. destructive technology
32:12
um i was very struck by the history for example
32:17
which i relate in in that chapter of the burning
32:19
earth of of the tank and even what it was going
32:21
to be called they're using all of these different
32:24
all of the different metaphors they use for this
32:26
um petroleum powered armored vehicle um are to
32:31
do with water other options where it was going
32:34
to be called a cistern it was going to be called
32:36
and eventually they choose a tank and Of course,
32:41
aerial warfare reaches a completely new level
32:44
of destructiveness during the war, to the point
32:47
where there's literally a new kind of weather,
32:50
the firestorm, which in the last two years of
32:54
the war, our allied bombings make possible. And
32:58
we reach the final threshold of harm, of course,
33:00
with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So I think that
33:03
the Second World War plays this... troubling
33:07
double role in both extending the capacity of
33:10
destruction to the point where literally everything
33:13
can be annihilated by nuclear weapons and at
33:16
the same time creating these technologies which
33:18
in particular allied soldiers are able to use
33:21
to insulate themselves from the environment and
33:24
that's how they started to talk about ddt when
33:26
the u .s army was doing the early trials the
33:28
idea that this would make whole environments
33:32
safe for american troops What happens to nature
33:37
where some of these greatest or most devastating
33:42
battles were fought? You know, like in the First
33:45
World War, Verdun at the Somme, or Second World
33:48
War, Stalingrad, Kursk, I don't know, Dresden.
33:52
It's like, you know, they always say like nature
33:54
came back or something. Some of these environments
33:59
must have been irrevocably changed, right? Absolutely.
34:03
There's a wonderful book by Cal Flynn on these
34:06
sort of landscapes and ruins. And there's a chapter
34:11
on the battlefields of the First World War in
34:14
which she shows that many of them are still toxic.
34:18
Many of them are still damaged. Soil scientists
34:23
have come up with a whole new word to describe
34:25
what the First World War does to some of the
34:27
soils of France and Belgium. They use the word
34:31
bomb turbation. It's an extension of the phrase
34:37
pedoturbation, which is just this sort of disturbance
34:39
of the soil. And bomb turbation is the disturbance
34:42
of the soil on an absolutely epic scale by explosives.
34:47
This has a geological impact. Similarly, with
34:52
some of the battlefields of the Second World
34:54
War, unexploded bombs are still being found,
34:59
even in London, certainly in Germany. Very often,
35:03
my sister lives in Germany, and she gets these
35:06
alerts on the Deutsche Bahn app saying, you know,
35:08
the train is being paused to find, because we
35:11
found unexploded ordnance. So the impact is colossal.
35:18
And I'm really struck by what you said about
35:20
nature comes back, because that is an interesting
35:23
metaphor or line of argument that you get after
35:28
both world wars. The idea that nature is resilient,
35:33
that however much human destruction you see,
35:37
there's perhaps even hope in the idea that nature
35:40
will grow back. And of course, one sees that,
35:41
one sees that all over. One sees scenes of absolute
35:46
human devastation while flowers are blooming
35:50
again. But there's also lasting harm. And the
35:55
lasting harm is both ecological and, of course,
35:57
the lasting harm is also psychological. Yeah,
36:01
there's even a meme. I think it became popular
36:04
during the pandemic about nature is healing,
36:06
you know. And then you see some guy in a park
36:10
reading a book. ironic twist but we do have this
36:13
sort of disney image of like and nature is going
36:16
to come back no matter what happens that's just
36:18
the way it is and you know feeling reassured
36:21
that after chernobyl you know they're still like
36:25
doggies running or you know forests are coming
36:28
back and all that stuff but it's not the same
36:30
is it it's not the same youtube videos of these
36:33
people coming in with the dosimeter and it's
36:36
like still super i mean i don't know how dangerous
36:39
it is but it's probably not very healthy or good
36:42
and i think we can also see i mean there are
36:46
very different moral lessons we can draw from
36:48
that idea that nature is coming back one is nature
36:50
doesn't care about us and so there's that whole
36:53
line of thinking and there was that book by alan
36:55
wiseman the world without us imagining you know
36:58
okay we'll disappear but nature will be fine
37:00
and of course that argument was a very um troubling
37:06
one that one heard during the pandemic at the
37:08
same time that there was such mass human suffering
37:10
and so much inequality in the way that people
37:12
were experiencing the pandemic. And so I think
37:15
there's at least a double edge to the way those
37:18
kinds of arguments are mobilized. Yeah, I'm from
37:21
the Balkans originally. And, you know, there's
37:24
this philosopher Slavoj Žižek, and he also has
37:27
some sort of a train of thought about like nature
37:31
being one big, we are a part of nature, but nature
37:33
is one big catastrophe. uh you know planets colliding
37:37
in black holes and the way we you know um we
37:41
kind of use these calamities like where does
37:43
oil come from and all of that stuff we're profiting
37:46
from it but nature is i think he says part of
37:48
my language that nature is not like a benevolent
37:50
mother but a bitch of a mother um much in in
37:55
light in what you said like that it doesn't care
37:57
about us so yeah i don't know And I think we
38:02
turn that around and say, well, those of us who
38:04
do care about humanity, I mean, how can we sort
38:08
of think through the fact that actually environmental
38:10
destruction is part and parcel of human suffering?
38:14
And that's the way I was sort of trying to tell
38:16
the stories of the two world wars in the book.
38:18
Right. I believe the period after the Second
38:21
World War is known as the Great Acceleration,
38:24
right? Where suddenly an exponentially increasing...
38:27
our water consumption carbon carbon emissions
38:30
rise dramatically and of course the human population
38:33
is booming and it seems that more than ever it's
38:36
all underpinned by our total detachment from
38:40
nature let's say um that i kind of opened the
38:42
conversation with and since i i went to to um
38:45
i went to bible school as a child i'm not religious
38:48
anymore it made me think of the famous passage
38:51
from genesis which goes like this i'm going to
38:54
read it i actually wrote it down Let us make
38:57
man in our image after our likeness and let them
39:00
have dominion over the fish of the sea and over
39:02
the fowl of the air and over the cattle and over
39:04
all the earth. That seems pretty damning to the
39:09
predicament that we find ourselves in, doesn't
39:13
it? Interestingly, back in the 60s, there was
39:17
a piece that the medieval historian Lynn White
39:20
wrote, and it was published in Science. This
39:22
is in the late 60s. and it was called you know
39:25
on the origins of our ecological predicament
39:28
and white's argument is that christianity by
39:33
desacralizing the world and by sort of emphasizing
39:36
um dominion perhaps from that very passage um
39:42
plays an important role in our ability to detach
39:46
ourselves from nature um now i think I mean,
39:53
that's the key word in the passage, dominion,
39:55
isn't it? Dominion. Let's be honest. And I think
39:57
it's interesting both to sort of recognize the
40:01
elements of that being true and the fact that,
40:04
of course, it's more complicated than that. There
40:07
are multiple Christian traditions. And, you know,
40:09
looking at it the other way, there was a really
40:10
interesting critique of White's thesis by Yi
40:13
Fu Tuan, who's a geographer, who said, well.
40:17
look, some of the most destructive institutions
40:20
in medieval China are actually Buddhist monasteries.
40:23
And so we need to distinguish between, yeah,
40:26
there were agents of mass deforestation. And
40:30
so we need to distinguish between religious doctrine
40:34
and behavior. And I think that's right, actually,
40:38
because I think we don't see a straight line
40:40
from any one sort of belief system to environmental
40:43
behavior or abilities to sort of protect. I think,
40:47
To put it more positively, I think one can find
40:49
strands of most major religious or spiritual
40:52
traditions that might either help or harm environmental
40:56
protection. But at the same time, I think you're
40:58
also then cherry picking the bits that one wants
41:00
to sort of see positively or negatively. I think
41:05
the other thing to say is, well, I'm not sure
41:09
how much. I think there are multiple ways that
41:15
that great acceleration has been justified and
41:18
legitimated and made sense of. One of them may
41:21
well be exactly the kind of idea of kind of we
41:23
are here to have dominion of the earth. But another,
41:28
which is very powerful, is, of course, from the
41:32
global south, the idea of development. The idea
41:35
of development and progress and freedom that
41:37
formerly colonized people are now sort of claiming
41:40
for themselves as their right, as their birthright.
41:44
And in some ways, these are all pushing in the
41:46
same direction. They're pushing in the direction
41:48
of imagining human progress without ecological
41:53
limits. And of course, some people have the luxury
41:58
of being able to imagine that more fully than
42:01
others, which is to say that if you're thinking
42:03
about working class residents of a city in the
42:08
global south, then the idea of being above nature
42:11
or insulated from nature is being challenged
42:14
every single day. And then for those with more
42:19
privilege in the global north, but also within
42:23
the elites of the global south, I think that's
42:25
a different... set of imaginaries that emerge
42:29
of really kind of insulating ourselves from natural
42:32
limits. Yeah. Go to the supermarket, you have
42:36
steak, you have veggies, everything's neatly
42:38
packaged. Here in Japan, everything's wrapped
42:41
into plastic. So it even emphasizes more that
42:45
this is a product, not completely detached from
42:48
its origins and stuff. And I think about this
42:50
recently. Not that I'm far from an environmentalist.
42:55
Don't get me wrong. Far from it. But just, yeah,
43:00
we rarely think about where is this all coming
43:02
from? How is it being sustained? And swaying
43:07
on me, I have to be honest, a little bit recently.
43:09
You're in Japan. I grew up in Singapore. A technology
43:13
like air conditioning is such an interesting
43:15
index of this idea that some urban residents
43:20
have of being able to, in a sense, insulate themselves
43:23
from even the climate. You control the climate.
43:27
And that's very true in the US. In the US, I
43:29
think on one estimate, something like 80 % of
43:31
American homes already had air conditioning by
43:33
the end of the 1970s. And so there really is
43:37
that sense that we control our environments in
43:40
a very literal sense. Okay, thus we arrive at
43:46
the present moment, which is marked not by one,
43:48
but by many pretty devastating, if interconnected,
43:52
crises. Of course, there's the climate breakdown,
43:55
but there's also deforestation, loss of biodiversity,
43:58
pollution, ocean acidity, microplastics, infestation,
44:03
apparently found in clouds also recently. Apparently,
44:08
we're breathing them out now as well. Pretty
44:12
scary stuff. Professor, this is truly not just
44:15
my Eastern European melancholy speaking, but
44:19
it doesn't look all that good out there, does
44:21
it? And just to add to the gloom, I think actually
44:27
that there is no, even while we deal with these
44:34
scary new risks and threats, some of the older
44:39
ones have not gone away, like warfare, like racial
44:45
discrimination, all of the ways in which human
44:48
beings have harmed each other. are now intersecting
44:51
with this expanding scale of environmental harm.
44:54
And I think they sort of feed on each other in
44:56
interesting ways. I think if we take a big picture,
45:00
we are facing an alarming future, and that's
45:06
to put it mildly. And yet we all have to function.
45:10
And I think the way that we all make sense of...
45:14
how to be and how to act is not at that level
45:17
of the planet, perhaps, but at the level of our
45:19
own communities, including the communities we
45:21
choose to be part of as citizens, as political
45:24
agents. And I think for me, writing this book,
45:28
which in some senses detailing a lot of suffering,
45:31
a lot of harm, I did find I had to keep shifting
45:36
scale from that sort of global and planetary
45:39
scale to the scale at which one can see. more
45:43
cause for hope one piece at a time in terms of
45:47
ways in which there are successes that one can
45:50
attribute to the global environment. Professor
45:53
Noll, please don't give me this like one guy
45:55
planted a couple of trees so we can be hopeful
45:59
for the future. My heart is going to give in
46:02
if I hear one of those. No, that's not what I'm
46:07
offering you. What I'm offering you is that the
46:10
one guy planting the trees It matters to that
46:19
guy. I'm not slagging off the guy. He's an amazing
46:22
guy or girl. I'm not suggesting that that is
46:26
going to save us. I'm suggesting that it matters
46:29
to that guy and that that is the paradox that
46:31
we have to deal with. Okay, fair enough. Now,
46:35
as a Balkan commie, I have to be honest, I always
46:40
fall back on the famous line from Chico Mendes
46:43
who said, ecology without class struggle is gardening.
46:47
I mean, can we truly even begin to address any
46:50
of this with more or with different so -called
46:54
green consumption? Any of the predicaments that
46:58
we're facing? It's a great quote. And I do spend
47:02
some time talking about Chico Mendes' movement
47:04
in The Burning Earth. And what is really interesting
47:09
is that... The specifically environmental dimension
47:13
actually comes very late into Chico Mendes' political
47:16
life. He's a labor organizer. And first and foremost,
47:22
and to the very end of his life, I think that
47:25
is what he prioritized. And even after his assassination.
47:31
some of his allies were pointing out that fundamental
47:34
difference between environment as a sort of luxury
47:38
concern of Global North, where the environment
47:40
is about protecting ecosystems from people, and
47:44
a sense that environmental protection without
47:49
thinking about livelihoods and work and social
47:52
justice is never going to mean anything to most
47:57
people alive in the world. I agree with that
47:59
profoundly. I am quite influenced by a book by
48:03
the Canadian political scientist Peter Dauvern.
48:06
It's called The Environmentalism of the Rich.
48:08
And it's a really interesting perspective on
48:12
just what you were saying, more green consumption,
48:14
greenwashing, lots of that going on. I think
48:20
without fundamental changes in how we live, EVs
48:27
are not going to... solve our predicament. Don't
48:33
get me wrong, the rollout of EVs will be good
48:36
for the air we breathe, but the amount of resource
48:39
that goes into that kind of production, whether
48:41
it's rare earths, whether it's water consumption,
48:44
I think we have to take the bigger view, which
48:50
you've just put on the table. Yeah, it's awesome
48:55
to see how... Especially in the global north,
48:58
people are all of a sudden rediscovering trains.
49:01
Why haven't we done this all along? What if we
49:05
had a system where a bunch of us could go in
49:09
a single car and drive somewhere without the
49:13
exhaust pipes? Anyway, I'm sorry. Before I start
49:18
ranting, let me ask you something else. Recently,
49:21
there's been a lot of debates about personal
49:22
carbon footprints. It always makes my, okay,
49:25
maybe this is not a good route for me, but it
49:28
makes my blood boil a little bit because while
49:30
we're arguing, if I can go see my mom who lives
49:33
on a different continent, a billionaire's carbon
49:36
footprint is reportedly that of a million people.
49:39
That's not my number. A million. So instead of
49:43
starting this discussion with paper straws, shouldn't
49:46
we maybe begin with private planes, megayachts,
49:49
and privately owned castles before we begin it
49:52
in earnest? I couldn't agree more. As we know,
49:58
this idea of the personal carbon footprint was
50:01
popularized by BP in the 1990s as a way to sort
50:05
of divert attention to individualized consumption,
50:10
around which, of course, there's sort of grown
50:13
a moralistic discourse in certain parts of the
50:16
world about we should. do this or do that, while,
50:21
as you say, the sort of private jets. There was
50:24
an interesting piece in, I think it was published
50:27
in either Science or Nature recently, about how
50:29
both the rich and the poor vastly underestimate
50:33
the carbon impact of the rich, which is to say
50:37
that if you ask poorer people, and this included
50:40
surveys done in India and Nigeria, if you ask
50:43
poorer people how much more than them do they
50:46
think that the rich consume, They underestimate
50:50
it. And of course, the rich underestimate their
50:52
consumption as well. So I think that there is
50:54
a level of... At this point about going to visit
50:58
your mother, I mean, that's not a trivial thing.
51:00
I mean, I think one of the outcomes of the global
51:04
history of the last 200 years is that many of
51:06
us have families scattered all over the world.
51:09
That that is, in a sense, part of the history
51:14
that has brought the world to the place that
51:16
we are. And so I think that... That very specifically
51:20
narrow focus on individual consumption is not
51:23
going to get us very far. Plus, it won't work
51:27
politically. So I think that that is absolutely
51:32
right to think about, well, what's really driving
51:34
this? What's really driving this? And I think
51:36
that that sort of disproportionate impact of
51:39
a very, very small number of people on whether
51:42
it's emissions or it's water use or it's pollution
51:46
is something we need to pay plenty of attention
51:49
to. And when it comes to transforming the environment,
51:53
there's a whole new player in town. Maybe it's
51:57
been a while, maybe it's been here for a while,
51:59
but it's becoming more prominent as the climate
52:02
breakdown becomes worse and worse. So that's
52:05
geoengineering, of course. There's lots of like
52:08
pretty crazy science fiction ideas floating out
52:11
there. I don't know, injecting aerosols into
52:14
the stratosphere and kind of... One was about
52:19
bleaching ice or something, or something like
52:23
that, about reflecting light back into the universe.
52:27
What do you think of this concept in general?
52:31
I mean, that must be the apotheosis of this entire
52:35
idea that features prominently throughout your
52:39
book. It is the apotheosis of the kind of conquest
52:42
of nature idea. It is, let us extend this as
52:46
far as it will go. And we treat the Earth's climate
52:49
as a thermostat that we can control. And they
52:52
use that language. You and I may think of these
52:57
as science fiction ideas. One of the things that
52:59
I'm aware of and that I do find concerning is
53:03
how quickly they have gained traction. How close
53:08
we are, I think, to some of these ideas being
53:11
implemented. And one of the stories that's told,
53:15
which I don't think is quite right, is that this
53:17
is an agenda of the global north that is being
53:19
imposed upon the rest of the world. I think it's
53:22
more complicated than that. In fact, I think
53:25
that one of the big concerns in the global south
53:27
is actually not that these technologies will
53:28
be used, but that they will not have access to
53:30
them, that they will be used unilaterally, that
53:33
the debates about whether we should use them,
53:36
the ethical and practical debates are being had
53:38
behind closed doors with a very, very small number
53:41
of people. One institution, Harvard University
53:45
and MIT, two institutions in the greater Boston
53:47
area, I think, account for a significant proportion
53:50
of all the research that's been done in this
53:51
area. And so there is a real question about under
53:57
whose terms and on what conditions this will
54:00
be done. There are a lot of concerns in an increasingly
54:04
divided world about the unilateral use of these
54:06
technologies. um these technologies are certainly
54:09
being developed at speed in china as well at
54:12
the same time and there are real concerns about
54:14
the impacts that the unilateral use of geoengineering
54:17
technologies will have of course on neighboring
54:19
countries um and i am not optimistic about any
54:27
prospect for international agreements on their
54:29
use, not at this moment, not at the way these
54:33
technologies are being developed. And so my sense
54:36
is that I think it is very likely these technologies
54:39
are going to be deployed. As a historian, I worry
54:43
profoundly about their assumptions, about the
54:48
consequences that they are bound to have, which
54:51
are outside the plan, so to speak. And most of
54:55
all, perhaps about, you know, whose voices are
54:57
at the table when we're actually making these
54:59
decisions. I mean, that's literally the plot
55:03
of the movie Matrix. We try to black out the
55:05
sun to defeat the robots. We have eternal darkness.
55:11
Scary stuff. We're on our way there in terms
55:16
of these technologies. I'm fairly convinced of
55:22
that. speaking of which what's your favorite
55:29
maybe like dystopian film or a work of art this
55:38
is a great question so I what is it called in
55:49
a scenario where we don't make it you know what
55:52
I mean When we don't make it. Yeah. At least
55:56
not in the way we would have hoped. So there's
55:59
a brilliant novel by the Indian novelist Prayag
56:02
Akbar called Lela, which is a powerful dystopian
56:08
novel about the privatization of everything,
56:14
including water. I'm sorry, but that doesn't
56:19
sound so fair -fetched from where I'm sitting.
56:22
It's the extension of that to its furthest possible
56:25
extremes. I'll give it a read. Yeah, I can't
56:30
recommend it highly enough. All right, perfect.
56:33
Okay, Professor, despite all of the destruction
56:35
and tragedy you detail in the book, you said
56:38
that writing actually gave you a bit of hope.
56:41
We touched on that before with the guy planting,
56:43
with the person planting trees. Since hope is
56:46
in short order these days, could you offer us
56:48
some, please? I think for me, the most hopeful
56:56
thing about writing the book was we can take
57:01
for granted. So you said earlier, you're not
57:04
an environmentalist. Well, I was not an environmentalist
57:07
to begin with. I grew up in a high rise Asian
57:10
city and I was absolutely convinced even when
57:12
I first became a professional historian that
57:14
environmental concerns were at best secondary
57:18
to concerns that I had to do with. social justice
57:21
and political freedoms. And so I think it's easy
57:25
to take for granted in a way just how quickly
57:28
the environmental movement has become a multifaceted
57:31
thing, which is not about separating the environment
57:35
as a concern from concerns about social justice.
57:37
And so for me, the most hopeful aspect of writing
57:42
the book is really the movement for what we now
57:44
think of as environmental justice or climate
57:46
justice. That movement has, you know, mountains
57:49
to climb and formidable obstacles in its way.
57:52
But it is a movement that I do think probably
57:55
mobilizes more energy and attention than any
58:00
other. And I think what's hopeful about it is
58:03
that it's not separating those things. It is
58:05
actually bringing them together and just showing
58:07
that the way we got to this planetary crisis
58:10
is completely bound up with the way in which
58:14
we have ended up with such a divided and unequal
58:18
world, and that the solution to both of those
58:20
things actually lies in bringing them together.
58:23
Last question, Professor. You said something
58:26
really interesting at the beginning of one of
58:29
your lectures that I listened to. You visited
58:33
Bangkok, I believe, a couple of times, and it
58:37
was after the floods, and the floods became more
58:40
and more common as they do. as the climate crisis
58:44
progresses. And you said that you were struck
58:47
by how people, how sort of normal life just came
58:52
back quickly and that you were not sure whether
58:55
that was resilience or whether that was us just
58:59
ignoring the problem and carrying on. As it stands
59:03
right now, which one is it? And I'm not just
59:06
talking about Bangkok. I'm talking about all
59:09
of us right now. This is the paradox, though,
59:13
isn't it? So Bangkok is a city I know well, and
59:17
I was referring to the first trip I made after
59:20
the catastrophic floods of 2011. And I was there
59:24
about three months later, and there was very
59:26
little visible sign left that the floods had
59:29
ever happened. Life went on. And I just found
59:33
this disconnect between the city I was experiencing,
59:37
which was a vibrant... This unequal city, megacity,
59:45
like so many other megacities. And all of these
59:48
things I was reading that, you know, 50 % of
59:49
the city is going to be underwater by 2050. And
59:52
we all read these things all the time. We hear
59:55
this about many of them Asian cities. We hear
59:58
this about Saigon. We hear it about Miami. And
1:00:03
I think... No doubt there is a level of blindness
1:00:11
that we have to adopt in order to continue inhabiting
1:00:16
these cities. But I think there's a deeper point,
1:00:19
which is that I am unconvinced by projections
1:00:24
that, you know, we're all going to move to northerly
1:00:27
latitudes. No, that's not how this is going to
1:00:29
play out. These cities are not going anywhere.
1:00:31
Life may well become more difficult in these
1:00:34
cities as a result of rising sea levels, as a
1:00:37
result of more intensive storms. But the idea
1:00:40
of retreat, which one often hears in certain
1:00:43
environmental and policy circles, I think that's
1:00:48
a fantasy. And I think that the way that the
1:00:51
climate crisis plays out is going to play out
1:00:53
in the places we know. I'm not sure resilience
1:00:56
is the right word necessarily to describe that,
1:01:00
but... I think a kind of realistic perspective
1:01:03
that we need to understand bit by bit how these
1:01:06
cities are going to change is perhaps more what
1:01:09
I was trying to get at with that. I ask that
1:01:12
because my home country of Slovenia faced some
1:01:16
devastating floods last year. It was the first
1:01:19
time. I'm almost 40 years old, but it never happened
1:01:22
before, not to that extent. And all the scientists
1:01:24
said it was, of course, exacerbated by the climate
1:01:28
crisis. And it's going to get... It's going to
1:01:30
keep getting worse and worse. But we kind of
1:01:32
fixed everything. And now we're just carrying
1:01:36
on. And there's not much discussion about any
1:01:40
of the causes anymore. Life has just returned,
1:01:44
like you said. And that's pretty much it. And
1:01:47
it is depressing in some weird, very specific
1:01:50
way to observe all of this. I'm not going to
1:01:53
lie. I think there's sort of two levels of denial.
1:01:59
On the one hand, there's the sort of straightforward
1:02:01
denial of the existence of climate change that's
1:02:03
sort of taken over the United States of America.
1:02:06
That's not so widespread. That's extreme. And
1:02:09
that's not so widespread in other parts of the
1:02:11
world. But there's another kind of denial, which
1:02:15
I think every society has some level of when
1:02:19
it comes to this, which is that the floods come
1:02:21
and the floods come again and the floods, which
1:02:24
haven't come before, are coming more and more
1:02:25
often. We reckon with it for a short amount of
1:02:29
time and then we continue. That level of denial,
1:02:33
I think, is fairly universal. And perhaps that
1:02:37
is just baked into the way we live now and the
1:02:40
way we think. But I think it's worth distinguishing
1:02:43
between that and the very extreme kind of climate
1:02:46
change denial that has sort of run rampant over
1:02:49
here on the side of the Atlantic. I mean, that
1:02:51
begs the question, how bad does it have to get
1:02:54
in order for us to... attempt some sort of actually
1:02:59
transformative change. And for whom? I mean,
1:03:03
for me, that's the fundamental question at the
1:03:05
heart of the burning earth. For whom? Because
1:03:07
I think that in so far as those with wealth and
1:03:12
power can retreat, whether to second or third
1:03:19
homes or sort of further elevations, This idea
1:03:26
that climate change will affect all of us is,
1:03:28
I think, both true and not exactly true. Yes,
1:03:31
it will. All of us who are alive on this earth
1:03:34
are going to be affected by more extreme storms,
1:03:36
by changing patterns of weather, by rising sea
1:03:39
levels. But there's a very, very different capacity
1:03:42
that different groups of people have to insulate
1:03:46
themselves. And that's a word that I've been
1:03:48
thinking about a lot. And until it reaches a
1:03:54
point where those with wealth and power are no
1:03:59
longer able to do that. I think that's why we
1:04:04
keep going. That's why we keep going, because
1:04:06
it's usually those with less political power
1:04:09
and less voice who are going to be the first
1:04:11
to be affected. And that's certainly been true
1:04:13
up to now. I know I said last question eight
1:04:16
questions ago, but this truly is the last question.
1:04:19
As a historian, Professor, do you think that
1:04:22
humans can learn from history? I do, but I don't
1:04:31
think that lessons from history are necessarily
1:04:37
a good guide to the future. I think that lessons
1:04:41
from history are important for our understanding
1:04:46
of our institutions. They're important for our
1:04:50
understanding of how we see the possibilities
1:04:53
before us. I mean, it is as a legacy of history
1:04:55
that certain options are thinkable and certain
1:04:57
options are not. i think we can learn from history
1:05:00
up to that point what i don't think we can do
1:05:04
is say well oh this moment is like that moment
1:05:07
in the 1930s or the 1940s and um we can learn
1:05:12
from what decisions people made then to sort
1:05:14
of guide us now. No, I think that what we can
1:05:17
learn from history is to learn both how we can
1:05:20
open and how we have limited our imaginations
1:05:22
as to sort of what futures might look like. But
1:05:25
then those futures are ours to make. And I don't
1:05:28
think the answers to that lie in the past at
1:05:30
all. Okay, we did end up on a sort of a hopeful
1:05:34
note there. Thank you so much, Professor Amrith.
1:05:39
Where can people find the burning earth find
1:05:43
bookstores everywhere i suppose absolutely all
1:05:46
right thank you so much that's been a pleasure
1:05:48
to talk to you a pleasure is all mine do you
1:05:50
maybe have any social media where people can
1:05:52
follow your work or no at amrith underscore historian
1:05:55
on instagram okay perfect all right thank you
1:05:59
thanks again and thank you we can do this again
1:06:02
in the future wonderful thank you thanks for
1:06:05
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