Shrinking the Earth: The Rise and Decline of Natural Abundance

by Donald Worster

Overview

The discovery of the Americas around 1500 AD was an extraordinary watershed in human experience. It gave rise to the modern period of human ecology, a phenomenon global in scope that set in motion profound changes in almost every society on earth. This new period, which saw the depletion of the lands of the New World, proved tragic for some, triumphant for others, and powerfully affecting for all.

In this work, acclaimed environmental historian Donald Worster takes a global view in his examination of the ways in which complex issues of worldwide abundance and scarcity have shaped American society and behavior over three centuries. Looking at the limits nature imposes on human ambitions, he questions whether America today is in the midst of a shift from a culture of abundance to a culture of limits—and whether American consumption has become reliant on the global South. Worster engages with key political, economic, and environmental thinkers while presenting his own interpretation of the role of capitalism and government in issues of wealth, abundance, and scarcity. Acknowledging the earth's agency throughout human history, Shrinking the Earth offers a compelling explanation of how we have arrived where we are and a hopeful way forward on a planet that is no longer as large as it once was.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190849856
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Donald Worster is Honorary Director of the Center for Ecological History at the University of Remnin of China and Hall Distinguished Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Kansas and. He is the author of many books, including A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir (OUP, 2008); Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930's (OUP, 2004); A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell (OUP, 2000); The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (OUP, 1993); and Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (OUP, 1993).

Table of Contents

Prologue: Gatsby's Green Light

Part One: Second Earth
The Age of Abundance Begins
Many Revolutions Follow
Ultimately, Stability
Field Trip: Nantucket Island

Part Two: After the Frontier
The Watershed
Land of Coal and Steel
The Resourceful State
Field Trip: Imperial Valley

Part Three: Planet of Limits
Plunder and Plenty
David Potter's America
A Wolf over the Hill
Earth's Boundaries
Field Trip: Athabasca River

Epilogue: Life on a Pale Blue Dot

Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Editorial Reviews

12/07/2015
Environmental historian Worster (A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir) thoughtfully addresses natural resources and the toll humans have exacted on nature over time. He leads into his discussion via F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, claiming that the classic novel can be considered “one of the country’s earliest environmental laments.” When Nick Carraway spoke of the mysterious green light in the distance, Worster contends, he could have been referring to “nature’s green light of infinite promise.” When European settlers arrived, the Americas “promised untapped seas, minerals hidden in underground seams and veins, wild-growing plants and animals, and all the forms of energy latent in the earth’s crust.” As people built houses and businesses, developed land, eked out livelihoods, opened factories, and manufactured automobiles, they used resources they did not or could not easily replenish. Industrialization would also give rise to a conservation movement that “sought not an end to all growth but an end to uncontrolled and unlimited growth.” Books from the late 1940s and early 1950s called for “a more critical-minded view of history and progress,” helping to initiate debates among natural scientists, engineers, economists, politicians, and voters. Worster’s literary conceit might be a stretch, but his thorough history reveals much about American environmentalism. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"[R]emarkable....[A] brilliantly crafted discussion of the limits imposed by our natural reserves, combining historical analysis, economic development and political decision making. Worster has the rare ability to present complex ideas in an easily accessible manner. He fills his book with the stories of the people who brought us both riches as a society and a body of ideas we can use to make us healthy again."—Roger I. Abrams, New York Journal of Books

"Amidst the numerous waves of environmental criticism and theory over the past 40 years, Worster, one of the early prominent voices of environmental history, manages to remain committed to the foundational principles that have defined the larger environmental movement, while also keeping in tune with the changing landscape of the field and the significant concerns of the present moment."—Kevin MacDonnell, Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences, Rice University

"Shrinking the Earth represents a critical and important contribution to environmental history. It is a book that is fascinating to read, erudite, and engrossing to anyone interested in comprehending the choices we have related to environmental issues and our future here on planet earth."—Joseph Michael Gratale, European Journal of American Studies

"Thoughtfully addresses natural resources and the toll humans have exacted on nature over time."—Publishers Weekly

"The mathematics of the statement, 'Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist'...is simple and unquestioned. Yet it has been conveniently ignored, not only by most economists over the last century, but many politicians, social scientists, and ecologists as well. In his excellent Shrinking the Earth, Donald Worster makes the convincing case that this disconnect between simple mathematics and the ivory towers ultimately stems from the discovery of the western Hemisphere by Europeans, which essentially doubled their carrying capacity."—Jeffrey C. Nekola, Trends in Ecology & Evolution

"Worster's is a humane eye; his new book thoughtful instead of hectoring, filled with profound insights. There are many among us who cling to the idea that nature was made for man to dominate and subdue. There are some who believe that despite shrinking resources, our scientific ability and technological know-how can somehow save the planet as we inch towards 9 billion mouths to feed. Worster asks his reader...what will happen if we don't heed nature's warning signs and come to terms with our shrinking planet."—Gaylord Dold, The Wichita Eagle

"Thinking beyond national politics may be necessary to address the social fractures we are seeing on every continent. This is the central message Donald Worster offers in Shrinking the Earth....Underlying the social and political tensions of the world, he argues, is concern that the future may not promise the growth opportunities it once did....This is the central irony in Worster's analysis: an economy based on New World bounty has been expanding while the bounty itself has been shrinking. This contradiction between expectation and experience has contributed to strange politics all over the planet, ideologies that reflect a fear that the dream of endless progress cannot be realized."—Shen Hou, Environmental History

"A far-ranging intellectual history of scientific, economic, and ecological thought in Europe and the United States, emphasizing how leading voices in these disciplines either accepted the finiteness of natural resources or argued that limits, if they existed at all, could be overcome through science, technology, and human ingenuity. True to the rest of Worster's extensive corpus, this history of ideas about abundance, scarcity, and limits is grounded firmly in a material history of the resources themselves....This book is far more than a sweeping review of ideas about nature and resources. Worster argues forcefully and persuasively that after half a millennium of abundance originating from the discovery of the Western Hemisphere, the world has reached its 'full complement of riches.' Our future well-being will depend on acknowledging and responding to nature's limits."—Philip Garone, American Historical Review

"One of our greatest environmental historians points out the thing we've done our best to ignore: that we live on a physical planet that comes with real limits. This intriguing volume is as much about our future as about our past."—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth

"In Shrinking the Earth Donald Worster compellingly shows how exponential population growth has pushed the natural world to the very edge of what it can sustain. At the same time, he explains how North America got to its present state and offers essential historical perspective for those seeking to restore some balance to our distressed planet."—Paul R. Ehrlich, Center for Conservation Biology, Stanford University

"Donald Worster is one of the most thoughtful of all environmental historians. In Shrinking the Earth he argues that age of abundance is over and that limits on natural resources will be an increasingly central reality of our collective future. It is a sweeping narrative, beautifully written and eminently readable, that has profound implications for how we think about our place in the world."—Peter Crane, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies

"Shrinking the Earth is a book that will forever change the way we look at our world. It is as much a book about the future of humankind as it is about American history. A gripping and readable story of America's conquest of nature, it calls, with subtlety and urgency, for a new era in which humans will begin to understand the fragility of their environment and their role in preserving planet earth."—Christof Mauch, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU Munich

"Shrinking the Earth confirms Donald Worster's stature as our finest environmental historian. In this elegant, probing narrative, he shows how some Americans have gradually and grudgingly come to recognize that our natural resources are finite. And he rightly wonders whether this recognition has come to too few, too late. Like all Worster's books, this is a sobering, compelling, and finally inspiring read."—Jackson Lears, author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920

"A bracing, intelligent survey of wealth become immiseration, essential for students of environmental history."—Kirkus

"[Worster is] a fine, precise, and courageous author of the first order."—Kansas Alumni Magazine

From the Publisher

2015-12-07
Eminent historian Worster (Emeritus, American History/Univ. of Kansas; A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir, 2008, etc.) offers a concise, often elegiac account of the end of the American centuries. The supremacy of the United States in world affairs in the last 100-odd years, writes the author, is the product of a kind of perfect-storm historical accident that will never come again: tt presupposes the discovery of a hitherto-unknown if suspected landmass full of underused, if used at all, resources and peopled, if peopled at all, by inhabitants who are easy to conquer and control. "Such a discovery," writes Worster sagely, "could happen only once in the earth's history." Given the exploitation of that newfound continent, not for nothing is the tutelary spirit of Worster's book Jay Gatsby, that great denizen of the "empty, soulless mansions" that give onto a view of an "impoverished, polluted wasteland." Our time is up because our natural riches have been so badly squandered. Even when it seemed as if they were inexhaustible, Worster notes, warnings were coming from the likes of the economist Adam Smith that there would come a time when the economy would attain stasis and could grow no further, absent the domination of other lands and markets. That talk of a "stationary state," Worster notes, has long been anathema, and anyone who has dared suggest that the country, continent, and planet have natural limits has been branded a pessimist. The most sacred American mantra of the rising superpower was instead "growth," even if that has been tempered by modern realities. And what realities they are: following the old pioneer trails westward, Worster invites us to "imagine what the western half of the continent may feel like in the year 2100 A.D.," when water, perhaps the most precious resource of all, is scarce and the prairies and deserts are depopulated. A bracing, intelligent survey of wealth become immiseration, essential for students of environmental history.

Kirkus Reviews