One With Nineveh: Politics, Consumption, and the Human Future

"One with Nineveh takes it title from Rudyard Kipling's "Recessional" ("Lo, all our pomp of yesterday / Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!"), his famous 1897 poem alluding to the pride and arrogance that went before the fall of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations. Their undoing, in addition to warfare, was deforestation and unsustainable irrigation, practices whose destructive effects were ignored by the elites at the time. In One with Nineveh, the Ehrlichs suggest that the hubris of our own civilization could be leading us to an end similar to Nineveh's - whose ruins lie near the Iraqi city of Mosul - if environmental trends such as loss of biodiversity and acceleration of climate change are not halted. Unlike the regional ecological collapse of Mesopotamia, this time the collapse could be global." "Both a cautionary tale and a call to action, One with Nineveh is remarkable in its sweep and in the range of solutions it proposes, from local actions to reform of national government to international initiatives. Grounded in science, economics, and history, the Ehrlichs' forthright discussion of the underlying issues of our time gives cause for considerable concern yet reason to hope."--BOOK JACKET.