I read this book back in high school (in 2017 when it was published) and it probably warrants a re-read now that I am older and have a college degree under my belt.

This book is very well written, and as far as I remember well-researched (though I am unsure if any information is now outdated). The discussion of climate change is poignant - especially as such a hot-button issue and with so much misinformation around what what climate change and global warming are. This book gives a very broad look at human history, and how humankind and the climate of the Earth intersect. Any one who enjoys broad histories may enjoy this book - though if you prefer history text with a more narrow focus this one might not be for you.

I received a copy of this book from Netgalley.

I wanted to see what the world has done to challenge us as hard as unchecked climate change is doing at this very moment. With a startlingly immense grasp, the scope of Humankind's long fight to survive despite the ways Earth changes is calmly but urgently expressed by Author McMichael. Anyone who loves to learn the ins and outs of a complex topic with a master teacher will lap this book up. The regime change due in the US on 20 January 2021 is the perfect time to learn why we should force our lawmakers to focus on climate's many effects on health, wealth, and food security.

No nonsense: When climate changes, humans must adapt or die

Climate Change anAd the Health of Nations: Famine, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations by Anthony J. McMichael (Oxford University Press, $39.95).

It’s hard to imagine a book more appropriate to the times than Australian epidemiologist Anthony J. McMichael’s historical view of human adaptation to climate change. That’s because last week’s IPCC report says we’ve got 12 years or less to the point of no return on climate change (see “Major Climate Report Describes a Strong Risk of Crisis as Early as 2040,” NY Times, 7 October 2018).

In Climate Change and the Health of Nations, McMichael doesn’t rely on extrapolations from current data; rather, he takes the very long–about 11,000 years–view.

Even a cursory study of humans’ wealthy agricultural past requires one thing to succeed: a stable climate. Other factors may cause ups and downs in our fortunes, but without a stable climate to allow long-term settlement hiland the ability to feed ourselves, we’re back to the foraging primates we started as–and, without a stable climate, that sort of life is more difficult as well.

McMichael outlines how climate change–both natural and man-made–has affected our societies, starting with its role in the collapse of Mayan civilization and the power of spreading epidemics (bubonic plague) to alter our fortunes.

It rapidly becomes apparent that deforestation, desertification, change in range for disease-bearing insects and altered climactic zones for agriculture mean big, big issues for a stable and successful human culture. While it’s an academic book, Climate Change and the Health of Nations is accessible for non-specialists and does an excellent job showing how climate change, no matter the cause, impacts human society–and survival.

This is probably the most important non-fiction book that I have read for at least a decade – if not ever. It is also fascinating, captivating – and incredibly well researched. It should be read by every politician, and every policy maker world-wide, but also by anyone with even the slightest interest in either history, geography, medicine, rise and fall of civilisations, economics, environmental science, weather systems, agriculture, climate change – or just human life in general: past, present and future.
This book shows the myriad ways in which human life on this planet is interconnected with the surrounding environment, which in turn is ruled by climate.
Climate change IS happening. One can debate whether or not it is man-made (this book is pretty clear on the current rise in global temperatures being predominantly due to human activity) – but, what is an undeniable fact, is that climate change (global, continental, and/or more localised) has historically brought about catastrophic changes to human societies. It has directly or indirectly caused wars, plagues, starvation, mass immigration/emigration, natural disasters, … Climate change has also, occasionally, lead to human progress (advent and spread of agriculture, the rise of empires and civilisations …), but the negative effects of climate changes are often more pronounced and tragic.
What we need to do, is to look at how we can ameliorate climate change now, stop the desecration of the planet, and actively plan for a viable future. This is not just about the extinction of a number of animal or plant species – it is about the continuation of the human species. In particularly, creating a future human society/civilisation that we would want to be part of – not merely an existence.
I started reading this book on my Kindle – highlighting so many passages, and making many, many notes of fascinating facts, and links between various occurrences. I decided early on that I had to have a hard copy of this book – and bought one as soon as it was published. The graphs and tables are difficult to read on the Kindle, so it was a real advantage to have the hardcopy at hand to see them more clearly.
I would recommend this book to everyone who cares about our past and future – and even more to those who don’t yet.
Some (few) of the quotes I highlighted:
Agriculture had allowed civilisations to flourish during the Eurasian Bronze Age but it also left many of these societies more vulnerable to climatic shifts.
Sometimes the changes were too rapid for successful adaption, and famine, disease and conflict were the result.
Then, during the 1340s, continental European populations suffered a decade of climatic extremes, crop failures and hunger. Crop—stripping plagues of locusts occurred in three successive summers in Hungary, Austria, Bohemia and Germany, followed by the “millennium flood” of 1342 that destroyed vast areas of crops and in 1344 a severe hot drought that caused harvest failure, famine and tens of thousands of deaths. This confluence of climate-influenced factors must have increased the spread and lethality of the Black Death
Less well understood but more serious are the threats to population health and survival caused by disruptions of the biosphere’s life-supporting system, especially as they affect food yields, water sufficiency, patterns of infectious diseases, and the stability of the physical environment.
Further, the economic and social consequences of environmental disruption and degradation often lead to job loss, impoverishment, migration, and perhaps violent conflict, all of which are causes of injury, disease, under-nutrition, misery, depression and premature death.
We can expect climate change to act as “force multiplier”, exacerbating many of the world’s health problems.
The world is now experiencing an upturn in the frequency and intensity of floods, fires, heatwaves and other weather disasters. In contrast, there has been virtually no increase in geological disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions).
Yet the world may well be heading towards an average global warming of up to 4°C by later this century, with even larger rises in polar and sub-polar regions. The projected rate of global heating outstrips anything in the geological record: the last time the planet’s temperature rose by 4°was 56 million years ago, but that change occurred over thousands of years, not over a single century.
Both significant cooling and warming, acting via biological, ecological and social impacts, may endanger food yields, contribute to infectious disease outbreaks and spread, affect water quality and availability, and exacerbate social disruption, impoverishment and displacement.
I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review, but also bought the hardcopy.

It seems absolutely crazy, but in the U.S. climate change is debated as to its validity. For most of the world, climate change is an indisputable fact, something to address, not something to argue as to whether or not it exists. Anthony J. McMichael's collaborative work, Climate Change and the Health of Nations, examines many different facets of climate change throughout the history of human experience, not just in the most recent few hundred years.

Some of the book was choppy, and it took me a little while to read through it. McMichael examines how the environment and humans interactions with the environment contribute to the ever changing climatic events we have seen throughout the course of human history. Not only does McMichael address the historical analysis and current issues, but he also adds to the discussion of what can be done to educate those who would deny the impact of climate change on our lived human experience.

McMichael examines the interrelation between humans and the climate and environment and how these three things have led to perfect storms throughout human history. I really found the work fascinating and the subject matter is really very interesting. It's worth the time it takes to read this just for the information that McMichael presents in a way that's accessible.

Please be advised that I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a fair review of the book.

Climate Change and the Health of Nations: Famines, Fevers, and the Fate of Populations by Anthony McMichael is a historical study of the effects of climate change. McMichael, medical graduate and epidemiologist, held a national research fellowship at the Australian National University, Canberra. He was also Honorary Professor of Climate Change and Human Health at the University of Copenhagen. He was previously Professor of Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene, Tropical Medicine (1994-2001), and President of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology.

Despite the scientific support for climate change it still remains a political issue in the United States. Debates over natural change and man-made change in the environment to even “just the weather” abound. The current administration even stopped agencies from posting climate change information on social media. McMichael doesn’t try to convince the reader of climate change. Instead, he takes a look at the history of man on the planet. There have been obvious and undeniable, climate changes during the last half million years. McMichael examines the impacts of the historical climate changes on man. We think of ourselves as a highly adaptable creature, but we do require a “Goldilocks” zone of climate -- temperature, light, and rainfall.

The history of man is the history of dealing with changes. Climate change is not necessarily the complete problem but acts as an amplifier to existing problems. In this last geological age man has dominated the planet forests have been cleared forests, created farmland and irrigation, domesticated livestock, and powered itself with coal and fossil fuels. With these elements, regional changes are examined from El Nino and volcanic eruptions and the temporary disruption to the environment. The Gulf Stream keeps the British Islands much warmer than Goose Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador which are at the same latitude. The Indian Ocean Dipole is responsible for droughts and flooding in India. Studying the effects and cycles of the natural phenomenon leads to predictions of long-term climate changes.

Climate change is real and even recognized by the Department of Defense, It issued a report that climate change lowers the world’s carrying capabilities which will result in aggressive wars. America’s electrical grid that controls almost every aspect of American lives. It is extremely vulnerable to attack. Even in our temperature controlled lives, a number of people die of heat-related deaths in modern urban cities. Imagine life without in the summer without cooling as the temperatures rise.

Over the past 70,000 years since man began to dominate the planet, we have seen the sixth extinction which is happening as fast or faster than any natural extinction in the history of the planet. The world’s climate is changing and by looking at past changes we can predict the possible effects of future changes. There is more climate change than just global warming. It also involves changes in rainfall and the frequency of droughts. There are also the effects on farmland and animal species. Climate Change and the Health of Nations is not out to prove climate change exists but to show the effects previous changes have had on civilizations. A historical reference to one of today’s most pressing problems.

In Climate Change and the Health of Nations, Anthony McMichaels starts by reviewing the issue of climate change, man-made and natural, and giving a two-chapter overview to bring your earth science up to speed. He covers how weather is related to climate, how climates are related to the perturbation of the ocean currents, the natural emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, the effects of other atmospheric pollution, and the timescales over which major changes in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere (and hence the global temperature changes) occur and have occurred over geological timescales. He then gives a brief overview of how catastrophic failures of civilisations tend to occur - war, famine, pestilence and disease - since his concern as an epidemiologist is the effect of climate change on human health.

In this magnificent book, he addresses the impacts of climate on the evolution of the human, using archaeological and geological evidence, and brings us forward in stages, examining different ancient civilisations and the climate record. Once we get to written records, the timescales start to shorten. If, like me, your science outweighs your history, you are likely to be astounded by the connection between plagues you've heard of and know roughly when they happened, and variations in the climate such as failure of monsoon rains causing century-long droughts, and the Indonesian super-volcano, which would have caused a 'nuclear winter', coinciding with periods of intense cold and famine in northern Europe. You may find it confusing with all the various tribal invasions, but the logical connection with shifts in weather patterns is repetitive and persistent.

I found the older periods easier to connect with than the post 14th century ones, partly because it was on a macro scale; the geographical spread was immense, with all civilisations in a three thousand year span dealt with in a not necessarily easy to follow way. I found the narrative jumped forward two thousand years and then back again on more than one occasion. In later periods, rich with written evidence, the author explains the role of rats and other disease vectors, linking to the ideal conditions in which the two main plague organisms multiplied; one in cold and dry, one in hot and wet. These conditions, found at opposite ends of trading routes, and the disease records in the settlements, mapped well onto the fluctuating influence of El Nino on both Atlantic- and monsoon- driven temperatures and rainfall.

Although I was irritated on several occasions by the author dropping in unsupported and sometimes unconnected items--such as the effect of the Great Smog in London in December 1952 in a section on air pollution in summer--the overall effect of the book is to give a clear connection between not only the direct health of the populations affected by extreme weather, but also the social unrest caused by it: riots, loss of confidence in leaders, overthrow of dictators and/or wars were inevitable conclusions.

It obviously helps if you have a good grasp of at least one of the sciences involved in this book, but it is a fairly easy read for anyone with a good grounding in general science, and a must for anyone with more than a passing interest in climate change and society.