One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption and the Human Future

Abstract

The Ehrlichs? title refers to Nineveh, once a rich and glorious city on the Tigris River, but now a group of dirt mounds in the desert ? will we le learn the environmental lesson, or repeat the history? This scholarly new book demonstrates again the ability of Paul and Anne Ehrlich to dig wide and deep into the literature of our social and environmental problems, to sift for the facts of change, and to piece a resulting mosaic together. On the resource side, the picture they create speaks in up-to-date detail of nearly universal environmental deterioration; of water, soil, biodiversity and atmosphere. Our resource use is out of step with our environment?s capability, and we are steadily damaging it. On the social side the picture points to the mismatch between the dominant culture?s view of the world and the world revealed by scientific analysis. The careful picture the Ehrlichs build speaks to all of us, on every cominent, and warns us that our cultures cannot continue like this. While the story is harsh, they also study solutions, physical and social, and these are as much at the heart of this book as their statements on looming problems.