If nothing anybody could have done would have changed the outcome of history, then nothing we can do now can shape our future: we are trapped in a further elaboration and extension of that which exists in the present, unless some huge accident of history such as a pandemic or a world war pushes us in a different direction.

The essence of Eurocentrism, according to the critics, is not merely that it views history from a European point of view (the “centrism” part). An ethnocentric perspective recognizes that there are many different peoples and cultures in the world, but that mine is better because it arises from my people and culture

Over the past two decades global temperatures have steadily increased (twenty of the hottest years on record are in the past twenty-two years),2 with discernable effects on weather patterns—hotter and drier summers in some places, wetter and wilder ones in others. And sea level increases are already worrying the leaders and citizens of oceanic countries. Stronger hurricanes and typhoons as well as longer and more intensive droughts are increasingly likely, leading to the loss of food security for affected peoples and the social and political disruption that follows. We know that global warming is caused by human activities, mostly the burning of fossil fuels that release carbon dioxide (CO2)

McNeill observed that he thought that a hundred years hence, at the end of the twenty-first century, historians and others looking back at the twentieth century would be struck by the significance, not of the two massive world wars, the rise and fall of fascism and communism, the explosive growth of the human population, or the women’s movement, but of the changed relationship of humans to Earth’s natural environment