Plows, Plagues & Petroleum by William F. Ruddiman

Posted by Mark Radulich on 01.09.2006

Ruddiman explains in acute detail how humans, since the dawn of civilization, have affected climate and what that means for our future.

The debate over our environment seems to be split into two camps. In the first camp are uber-conservatives who appear to believe that there is no such thing as pollution or environmental degradation. These are the people who are convinced that humans have no effect on the environment, thus making it perfectly fine and ethical to ignore environmental precautions and regulations. If you've ever listened to the Rush Limbaugh show, he perfectly sums up this attitude when he purports that the earth has been here for untold billions of years and no matter what we do to it, it'll continue to live on, relatively unharmed by the hands of human civilization.

The other camp professes that the above belief is a bunch of hooey. The liberal/eco-friendly/environmentalist crowd believes that the earth is sacred and should be preserved above all else. That sounds just dandy at first, but when you take a closer look at how these people intend to go about bringing on this idea of mass-preservation, it is plain to see that the strict environmentalists are at the very least irrational and unreasonable. Many feel that our modern lifestyles of invention are a sin against this valuable planet. They have suggested, quite seriously, that we abandon our polluting cities and mass manufacturing and go back to the simple life of farming. Live off the land and mother earth will go on unmolested.

Neither side is correct, according to University of Virginia's retired Professor of Environmental Studies, William F. Ruddiman. In his new book, "Plows, Plagues and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate," Ruddiman explains in acute detail how humans, since the dawn of civilization, have affected climate and what that means for our future.

What is particularly great about this book is that Ruddiman is not speaking from the pulpit of a particular political platform. By his own admission, he is merely presenting the pure scientific facts of his arduous studies. At the end of the book, he explains rather succinctly that part of the reason he wrote "Plows, Plagues & Petroleum," was to provide clarity in a debate that has been hijacked by extremists on both sides of the fence. He also uses this text to answer the critics of his previous work on the correlation between climate and human manipulation of the earth in the advancement of civilization.

The first third of this book deals exclusively with glaciers. That's right, I said glaciers. Ruddiman has completed extensive investigations of ice cores and glaciers that provide a detailed history of how much methane and carbon dioxide we have released into the atmosphere. Ice cores and glaciers tell about the development of human civilization in much the same way as geological digs. By examining and dating layers of sediment in said ice cores and glaciers, we can compare and contrast the amounts of methane and carbon dioxide released in that era, according to Ruddiman. When we cross-reference these findings with milestones in the development of human civilization, the results are very telling and make up the major thrust of Ruddiman's book.

We also learn in the pages of this text that contrary to the claims of many environmentalists, farming is not a natural practice and, where greenhouse emissions are concerned, not very good for the planet. Ruddiman shows how the practice of farming and irrigation involve a very deliberate manipulation of the earth's natural patterns of vegetation production. This practice results in the release of more unnatural greenhouse gasses than would have normally been produced had humans stuck to the nomadic hunter/gatherer lifestyle of our predecessors. Ruddiman's thesis is that once humans across the globe switched to a sedentary, agricultural lifestyle as opposed to the aforementioned nomadic one, we began to take control of the climate away from our most powerful mother earth.

The other issue with farming is the amount of available land. Great swaths of farmable land were not as plentiful as one might have believed them to be. In order to create arable land, humans cut down forests in large numbers, much like we do today, in order to maximize the land we needed for the building blocks of civilization. More than just making room for farmland, we also used the wood from trees for construction material, transportation, weapons, and in some cases as a source of food. The downing of all these forests resulted in an unnatural release of methane that then contributed to global warming.

Ruddiman also describes in detail how the earth goes through natural periods of glaciations. We often hear talk of "the Ice Age," as if it was an anomaly in the earth's natural history. In fact, ice ages are actually a part of earth's natural cycles. According to Ruddiman, the introduction of farming and thus a massive influx of greenhouse gasses actually staved off what would have been yet another in a series of glaciations. That's right, we puny humans stopped an ice age from happening. I guess we do have an effect on the earth after all.

Ruddiman counters arguments that there is no relationship between the increased release of greenhouse gases and the development of faming by linking eras of decreased greenhouse gas production to dates in which the human population decreased. For those who know their history, the fall of the Roman Empire was followed by the Dark Ages. Ruddiman shows that among the other terrible tragedies befalling human civilization in that time was what he calls a "mini-Ice Age." Due to the bubonic plague that ravaged the continent of Europe, the human population fell precipitously and thus, so did farming and clear-cutting. In that time period, as studies of ice cores and glaciers show, there was also a drop in greenhouse gas emissions. Those levels begin to rise after the Enlightenment and more to the point, when people stopped dying and went back to farming.

Ruddiman ends his work with a survey of our current energy situation. He declares that fossil fuels such as that much-coveted black gold, oil, are most definitely in short supply. We will eventually deplete all of the oil lying beneath the surface of the earth. Yes, there are new discoveries of wells all the time, but none of those hold an infinite supply of oil and they too will eventually dry up.

Ruddiman makes some sober suggestions on how to go about moderating between the needs of the civilized world and the complete degradation of our planet. Most importantly, he recommends a rational dialogue between the tree huggers and the tree cutters so that solutions that mutually benefit both sides can be enacted.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a bit technical at times and if you get bored by that sort of writing you might have trouble getting through the early parts of the book but overall, even a C science student like me was able to understand and enjoy this work.