Abstract
"In state affairs, by foreseeing [problems] at a distance, which is only done by men of talents, the evils which might arise from them are soon cured ; but when, from want of foreseight, they are suffered to increase to such a height that they are perceptible to everyone, there is no longer any remedy." Machiavelli, The Prince.
Through this historical essay composed of seventeen chapters, Clive Ponting examines the emergence of civilization and its development from early hunters-gatherers communities to the globalized and interdependent network of exchanges and communications constitutive of mankind's contemporary political, economical and social organization. Focusing on how human beings were recurrently confronted to environmental pressure and on the way with which they shaped their environment to their advantage allows one to have a clearer insight of the several trends responsible for the prospective 'immense environmental problems' that they will have to face in the next decades.
Considering the wealth of the details and in order to adequately restore Ponting's words we will seek to bring out linearly the author's several theses and the main outlines of his argument through a few examples. Even though every chapter could be read separately, the overall coherence of the work can be summarized in an attempt to reveal "how overexpansion and the exhaustion of available natural ressources have played key roles in the collapse of all great cultures in human history".
