The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight… what a precise way of portraying the situation our world’s depleting resources are in. Written by Thom Hartmann, this book was recommended to me by my father. He told me to study it as it would aid me greatly, expanding my pool of resources to meet the demands of the General Paper module. More importantly, the book would provide me many new perspectives to the current situation our world is in.

Only after reading a tenth of the book, I have already gained many new insights and perspectives to what is wrong and why our world is in peril. It is amazing how Hartmann can piece together his floorless wholesome viewpoint which has much cold hard facts as backing.

I will now try to summarise what little I have digested so far. First, Hartmann emphasizes that we are all made of sunlight. Think of it this way – we all feed on plants directly or indirectly through herbivores or even-more-indirectly through carnivores that eat herbivores and so on. Since plants are the only organisms which have the capability to store energy from sunlight through a series of chemical reactions, they are the reason why we can live on this beautiful earth, so thank them!

During the time mankind first roamed the earth, they lived off what their environment could provide them directly – basically fruits to pluck and animals to hunt. However, when humans discovered that some animals they hunted could feed on other plants that they could not, the idea of domestication and herding was born. From then on, food supplies soared and population was on the rise.

As time goes on, mankind discovers more and more different means of garnering energy. But ironically, these resources were in the forms of minerals, coal, oil etc. and were limited. Sadly, humans became more and more dependant on these limited resources, turning to mechanization and other forms of technology to further strain the already depleting reserves.

Hartmann puts it in a way that makes me feel that the sky will really be falling down on us. I can only hope that the solutions he speaks of which I will get to read in detail in the later parts of the book can raise my spirits again. In his concept, the word at hand is sustainability. When humans start to use up energy more than the earth is getting daily through sunlight, it is bound to deplete sooner on or later. The driving force of our world today is mainly oil. As these oil reserves are formed over millions of years, they can be termed as “ancient sunlight”. As such, we are draining what little is left of this “ancient sunlight”. Furthermore, we are nearly totally dependant on these limited resources as the massive oil industries are actively suppressing the development of garnering alternative energy resources. As the years go by, we are improving our technology to harvest these resources at a quicker pace, making it seem as though advances in technology are actually driving us to the verge of destruction on many fronts. Therefore, the situation we are in seems very bleak.

What I have written above is basically only one of the many concepts Hartmann has brought out in his amazing book which Neale Donald Walsch, author of Conversations with God has labeled, “One of the most important books you will ever read in your life”.

I hope you found the entry meaningful!

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