The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the Wor… (2025)

Though updated with statistics and events through 2004, this reads like a prophetic treatise on the collapse of our industrialized culture which is entirely based on fossil fuels, a limited resource. No one seems to deny that oil is limited, but 2 narratives determine our actions today: Older and younger cultural beliefs. Older cultures valued generosity, leisure, and community. The younger cultures value productivity, accumulation and individualism. He gives many examples to illustrate his points making this an interesting read, not academic at all.
The first part of the book describes the problems: higher concentrations of CO2; loss of diversity with increased plant and animal extinctions; exploitations of the poor and the increasing wealth gap between the rich and poor; deforestation; attempts to privatize a basic human need: water; and continuing human slavery. But the second part explores how we can look back at older ways of thinking and redefine our relationship with the world and with each other. As I was reading, I thought about the Massai I met in Kenya and the recent documentary I watched about the Amish. Both cultures seem backward to a society totally dependent on a diminishing resource, yet they are more prepared to survive the collapse of industrialism than I am.
There are 2 documentaries on this topic of peak oil more recent than this book that I have seen: "Collapse", and "Blind Spot". But Thom Hartmann's book is the most hopeful and spiritual and in that sense, a more thoughtful and challenging read. Everyone needs to read this as there is much food for thought.

Saw this author in the DVD "11th Hour." He discusses the difference between living on "current sunlight" and "ancient sunlight."

Current sunlight is the energy we are currently receiving each day from the sun to our food source, etc. Most of our human history involved living with "current sunlight."

Since the Industrial Revolution, we have used "ancient sunlight. Ancient sunlight is the energy stored in the earth from fossil fuels, etc. Ancient sunlight is not an unlimited resource and has supported a human population explosion. He states that by using "current sunlight," the earth could support maybe 1/2 to 1 billion people. And the increase in our bloated population is conributing to our environmental problems.

Here's a Gore vidal quote used in the book:

"Think of the earth as a living organism that is being attacked by billions of bacteria whose numbers double every forty years. either the host dies, or the [parasite] dies, or both die."

The author also discusses our view of nature. We can realize that we ARE nature, and that viewpoint will dictate how we treat our environment. When we see ourselves as "separate" from nature, we think of nature as a resource to be exploited.

As of September 2008 we’ve officially entered the end of the oil age. Our economic system based on infinite growth has run into the limits of the physical world. Now that our social systems must rapidly adapt to a new reality of energy scarcity, we must pay special attention to the humans within those systems. Thom Hartmann’s Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight is a particularly lucid roadmap to a new social order by focusing on the actions an individual can take in the context of our ecological crisis.

Even though I’m sufficiently aware of the information behind Peak Oil and the oil age’s connection to rapid global population growth, I found Hartmann’s summary of this topic to be one of the best introductions available. Representing the world as varying forms of ancient sunlight is a powerful analogy that can introduce even the most encapsulated thinkers to holistic systems thinking. It reminded me of the idea that innovation can either be built on success of the past or borrowed from the future. Hartmann provides all the facts and figures necessary to demonstrate that the majority of our current lifestyle is dependent on the ancient sunlight of the past, stored in dense forms like oil and coal. Our depletion of this resource has borrowed even the most basic support systems from the future.

Yet, how can we be in a situation that is so dire yet everything looks so good? (Even though a lot of this has changed since Hartmann updated the book in 2004, because in 2009/2010 things are starting to look quite bad.) Ancient Sunlight explains that our modern industrial civilization is living off its startup capital, like a company that is building a lavish office without pushing a sustainable business model. We are blind to problems underlying economic systems and infrastructure because we don’t have to as long as we are growing, much like the enthusiasm behind a ponzi scheme before it falls apart. The severity of this situation cannot be iterated enough. An example is in human slavery, the dense form of energy we have now gives us access to hundreds of energy slaves that can drive our cars and light our houses, without this it would take many humans to do equivalent work. Coupled with collapses in biodiversity, water shortages, widespread desertification because of climate changes, and massive cutbacks in forest cover are presenting our species with a decade of significant change afoot.

Analyzing how we got here is a useful way to build a model for the future. By looking at historical examples of global cultures Ancient Sunlight draws a distinction between Younger Cultures and Older Cultures. Hartmann explains how younger cultures are warlike, agressive and obsessed with superiority while older cultures are filled with respect, integration and conservation. A poignant example is how the two cultures handle diversity, younger cultures seeking integration and dissolution of ” the other” while older cultures respect and encourage individual expressions of a cultural identity.

The younger culture is a culture of control, gaining power through its current incarnations with the powerful drugs of television and general entertainment, just two of the things that completely disconnect us from our natural environment and our birthright as humans. Hartmann provides an all encompassing look at the stories we tell ourselves about our culture, i.e. that we are separate from the world, that it is our destiny to subdue the world, get yours before anyone else can. Constrast these examples with the older culture stories, i.e that we are part of the world, that we must cooperate with the rest of nature.

Much of this comes from our view that natives were lazy and stupid, falsehoods that are overturned by even a cursory study of the accounts from ethnographers, whether of brilliant pharmacological solutions to illness in the Amazon or of the technology of the !Kung tribes which allowed them to work less than 20 hours a week. Cooperation is revealed as the basis for a new paradigm, a better society encompassed by this statement from Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Ultimately Hartmann concludes that our private practices of raising awareness and informing ourselves of these problems can lead to an empowered group ready to provide leadership as our industrial civilization loses its control. After practicing years of meditation myself, I couldn’t agree more on a better way to start. Quiet time for reflection has led me to immense personal and universal truths. After reading The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight I can see this practice has done the same for Hartmann.

It was such an amazing book to read. This book was required for my AP English summer reading, and when I started it, I immediately thought, "Oh, no. This is one of those annoying books that the school picked out to torture us."

For many that I know, this book was exactly that, but for me, it was a wake-up call. Since California is in such a big drought, I was aware of the problems of insufficient natural resourcea that we are facing worldwide. However, it wasn't until reading this book that I realized how dire the situation was. (And this revised copy was published in 2004!)

I absolutely loved the way the author presented facts to us. He did such a good job in explaining the differences between the Older Cultures and the Younger Cultures.

Usually, as a Buddhist, it's hard for me to read text that talks about religion (since the author always seemed to be trying to impose their religion on the reader), but Thom Hartmann was an exception. In this book, he tells us that differences between communities are absolutely natural, and it wasn't until the birth of the Younger Culture that identified differences as negative.

Why? In the Younger Cultures, we LOVE to conform. Conformity is what makes us feel less self-conscious at that one party. Conformity makes us seem less of an outsider. The reason for this is because we have set up a hierarchy for the differences. However, he explains that in the Older Cultures, they have no hierarchy. They don't view someone with a different set of beliefs as bad, but just as different. The main point he makes about this (and also follows throughout his book) us that they also don't try to impose their own beliefs to someone who has a set of different ones. Never once in the book did he tell someone to convert. He just tells us to take a moment and question what the ORIGINAL point of our religion, government, etc.

This book is such an amazing and eye-opening experience. It really makes you question the society we live in today and wonder in what ways we can start connecting to nature again.

The latest in the series of climate-related books I've read, I cannot say that I would recommend this one. Originally published in the nineties, but now in its third edition published in 2018, the author has not done a good job of updating the book, with many old statistics littering the text.

In addition, it is an organizational mess, with Hartmann hopping from topic to topic, spending a couple of pages vaguely alluding to one issue after another without settling into a real discourse beyond the type of talking points you've read a million times on Common Dreams or other liberal websites of the early aughts. Two pages on buried methane in the arctic; two pages on deforestation; two pages on ocean currents; now we're talking about weird meditative techniques for some reason; etc. Hartmann has published a number of books on ADHD, and I don't mean to be unkind, but this book reads like it was written by someone with trouble with sustained attention.

The final part of the book is dedicated to a comparison between what Hartmann calls Younger Cultures and Older Cultures. By Younger Culture, he means any form of human civilization that makes use of agriculture and builds city/states. By Older Culture he means our tribal forebears and those few pockets of existing tribal humanity that are still out there. He extols the virtues of Older Cultures at great length, only to admit at the end that going back to tribal forms of living is not really practical at this juncture without immense human suffering as a result. It's not that there isn't a point of some kind to made in the comparison, but Hartmann never quite says how exactly we can get from here to there.

I guess I'm losing patience with books that take a pie in the sky approach to addressing the climate crisis, which urgently requires action now. No doubt Hartmann would say that my thinking on the matter is hopelessly influenced by the Younger Culture that I have lived in my entire life, but these dinners of air do not satisfy me.

The first third of this book outlines all the problems we've got going on, on this planet. Since this book was published originally in 1998, it covered ground I was pretty familiar with. No solutions were offered, though. Then, there was a section about culture and then a third section. Hartman is fond of "Old Way" thinking, characterizing modern society as "Young Way" thinking. According to him, primitive cultures had it going on. But what to do about the fact that we don't live in primitive cultures anymore? There are no solutions in this book! Near the end, I hit this paragraph which made things clear:

"Missing the point of a book like this is quite easy to do, because the book makes a radical departure from the normal fare of self-help and environmentalism. It presents the problems, delves into the causes of them, and then presents as a solution something that many may think couldn't possibly be a solution because it seems unfathomably difficult: change our culture, beginning with yourself."

Okay then. I'm off to change the culture, beginning with myself.

A Thoughtful Search for a Silver Lining amid the Gloomiest Storm

It is quite normal to get deceived when you are ignorant, to get distracted when you are not free, and to become desperate when you can see no hope. These are the three states which Thom Hartmann challenges in his book, calling for an action by every individual to face a problem that undermines the existence of the whole of humanity. It is not yet another book about the environment and the depletion of nature's resources, as it is a unique book that speaks to the practical as well as the spiritual, the informed as well as the misinformed. You may not like all that's written in it, but that won't change the fact that its premise is true, and the truth usually hurts.

Hartmann is an author, a radio host, a psychotherapist, and a political commentator, among other things. His areas of expertise include treating ADHD -- a main subject of some of his books -- studying tribal communities, and, as it seems from this book, a casual interest in spiritual meditation. He has a good understanding of science and is rightfully concerned about the future of our children as we all should be. In this book, which was originally published in 1998 -- the edition on which this review is based -- followed by a revised edition in 2002, he tries to build a momentum towards "sustainable living" through a clear understanding of the scale of the problem ahead of us. His aim is a collective action of all humans, yet he describes why that is impossible in a system like the one we are living in. Hence, he appeals to the individual, trying to build from the ground up an awareness of the need to change, so as to at least mitigate the dangers as our modern culture sucks the life out of the planet.

From the beginning of the book, it is clear that what lays beyond us isn't a rosy way. The author notes that he divided the book into three sections, each trying to answer the following questions respectively: What the scale of the problem is? How have we gotten ourselves into such a dire situation? And what can we do to escape the seemingly inevitable doom? He emphasizes that those who like to only hear good news will feel a tendency to stop the reading after reaching the middle of the first chapter for the lack of any. He invites them, though, to continue reading with a promise of a silver lining towards the end of the book.

The first chapter is as intense as it should be, detailing the current situation. The prospects are gloomy, projecting a future in which nothing of substance is done to circumvent the status quo towards a better destiny. It is purely scientific, qualifying as a concise, simple introduction to the mechanics of nature and how our actions are disturbing it -- I really believe it should be taught in schools. Hartmann refers to all sorts of energy as sunlight, whether current, like plants and animals' meat, or ancient like coal and oil. The premise of his book, and especially this chapter, is simple: Sunlight is the source of almost everything living on Earth and the energy these creatures consume. Thus, consuming only current sunlight means maintaining a stable population dependent on what the lands can deliver as energy while consuming ancient sunlight means growth of population beyond the Earth's output of current sunlight. One can immediately see where this is going by rereading the title of the book.

In the course of describing the whole natural cycle of energy production and the vital role of trees in it, Hartmann reminds us of bits of history that show how development affects the environment through the patterns of consumption of energy. It all began with hunting-and-gathering tribes, which date back to more than hundred thousand of years, depending totally on current sunlight. With herding came the use of extra plants unneeded by humans but essential to increase the population of animals, and consequently humans; it was still current sunlight though. Then came agriculture a few thousands of years ago, planting the very first seed of "civilization," allowing the emergence of large, hierarchical communities, which are usually referred to as "city-states" throughout the book. Agriculture meant the more effective use of the land to produce human-edible food, allowing populations to rise once more. The first use of stored sunlight was by getting fuel through the burning of wood which started a few thousand years ago. The first widespread usage of ancient sunlight was in the beginning of the industrial revolution with the extraction of coal. This, along with the later discovery of oil, caused the unprecedented rapid growth of population and consumption during the last century, accompanied by unprecedented levels of pollution and erosion of fertile lands. The consequences were no more local, thanks to the advancement in transportation, as the whole world started to depend mainly on the ancient sunlight, as the current sunlight became unable to sustain all the consumption needs.

The city-state culture is an important factor that contributed to the over-consumption of the planet according to Hartmann. He shows that from as early as Mesopotamia, natural resources were eradicated by consistent consumption, eventually causing the fall of the civilization itself. This pattern, he argues, keeps on occurring for each city-state civilization that arises, including ancient Greece, Rome, China, and many others up to this day. He provides arguments from the likes of Aristotle portraying humans as the masters of nature and links these convictions with the tendency of cities to expand, seeking more power. This paves the way to the comparison between the domination nature of city-states communities and the cooperation culture of tribal communities, which is the main theme of the second chapter.

For more than a hundred thousand years, tribes generally lived peacefully and sustainably until the arrival of the dominant culture of city-states. With that premise in mind, Hartmann spends most of the second chapter describing a somewhat romantic version of tribal lives, elaborating on what he believes is the true meaning of freedom and spirituality. He parts from the scientific tone of the first chapter, focusing more on a narrative that sounds more like story telling. And despite his experience with the subject and the research he has evidently done, most arguments are plausible but not necessarily true, which is understandable in a way, given the scarcity of information about ancient tribes.

Nevertheless, Hartmann pinpoints the essential features of tribal life and its sustainable model correctly. These features, which are described extensively in the book, are mainly cooperation within the tribe, respect of diversity among other tribes, and the connectedness to nature. He calls this model of living "old culture," while that of city-states is called "new culture." With these names, he implies that the tribal way of life is the natural one, having preceded our way of life with thousands of years.

Looking once more into history, he gives a few examples of ancient tribes who are not around anymore: some examples of tribes that were either assimilated into the culture of their conquerors or destroyed by them, and some accounts of crimes that were committed by conquerors in the name of civilization, Columbus being the protagonist of one of these horrific accounts. He also mentions other tribes which are struggling to survive in our rapidly growing, modern day world. He argues that in face of the juggernaut of city expansion, a tribe only has three choices: to fight, to surrender, or to run for another land, with the three choices leading eventually to the same consequence, because of the hungry and contagious domination culture of city-states.

The second chapter is full of historical narrative. Hartmann's goal is to inform us about the disadvantages of living in cities and the advantages of the tribal way. Still, he states clearly by the end of the chapter that his motive is not a longing for living inside caves, but a desire to bring the tribal notions of cooperation and respect to our societies. That's the basis of the "solution" he explains to us in the third chapter.

Of those who eagerly waited for the promised "new yet ancient" solution, some may get disappointed a little at the first few pages of the last chapter. Spirituality is a main component of the book -- and of Hartmann's way of thought for that matter -- that he spends quite some time praising the spiritual tribal life and lamenting the materialism of the city-states. His proposed spiritual solution consists of some vague concepts and figures of speech like "living in the here and now," "seeing the face of God," and "touching the sacred." Practitioners of meditation, as well as deeply religious people, would probably find this amusing; it seems to me, however, that all this talk about spirituality can be summed up in the practical notion of being "connected to nature" and aware of how one affects it.

Those among us who are inclined to the more scientific argument wouldn't have to wait for long though, as Hartmann's rhetoric transforms into more tangible solutions a few pages ahead. He prescribes a set of actions to change our culture, which I believe is extremely important and directly to the point. The list includes cutting addiction to consumerism by living frugally and learning the "secret of enough," living independently "off the grid" to eliminate the dependence on government, empowering women, and imitating the outline of the tribal way of life by creating what he calls "intentional communities." All these solutions are derived from the basic principles of localization, accepting diversity, and the reduction of consumption.

Throughout the book, Hartmann introduces concepts in clever ways and using clever analogies. He rightfully describes our current economic model as a "Ponzi scheme" or a finite "startup capital" we keep spending from, leading us to a breakdown, which will make the cities we live in more like "time bombs." He compares Earth to a cancer patient suffering from an unsustainable growth, an allegory of the culture of domination and its consequent overpopulation. All this may change, however, if we change the mindset, usually referred to in the book as cultural "stories," a word that implies conviction regardless of the truth. He explains why diversity is important using an example of a power grid with multiple points of failure, and how small deeds can lead to big changes using the example of an electric transformer. In addition to his clever writing, each chapter is preceded with an introduction and a set of questions to prepare the reader for what is coming, and every section of each chapter begins with a related quote reflecting upon the subject to be discussed, which I have found usually to be very thought-provoking.

But despite Hartmann's brilliance in many pages, there were few parts in the book in which his bias and enthusiasm for his ideas outweighed his commitment to the truth. For instance, while acknowledging in a paragraph or two that there were some violent and unsustainable practices among some tribal people in the past, his overall portrayal of the tribal culture is somewhat too romantic, if not Utopian. In other parts he treats questionable theories as scientific facts to the point of comparing Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance to Einstein's relativity, and using particles entanglement as an evidence of the instant transfer of ideas like some kind of a universal consciousness -- a conclusion that is not scientifically sound, at least till now.

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight is a heavy read because of its subject that challenges many widely accepted ideas. It is heavily critical of scorched-earth tactics and slash-and-burn agriculture. It doesn't shy away from showing the plight of Indian Americans in the face of the savagery of the white colonists. It attacks capitalism for driving overconsumption, socialism and communism for focusing on defining the patterns of consumption rather than promoting cooperation, and organized religions for their historic role in forming the culture of domination. Even recycling and many of the "Green" initiatives are not spared. Above all, it directly takes aim at our modern way of living.

Not everyone will be willing to accept Hartmann's message in this book, and from those who will, many will not find the promised solution conclusive. And it is not. Even Hartmann acknowledge that much damage has already been done, yet I can't see that as an excuse to wait for the Apocalypse; you shouldn't either. The discussed "plan of action" should be regarded for its outline as a guide to a system with sustainable living as its main concern. It has been more than 15 years since the first edition was published, and we are still falling steadily in the same trap. It is partly because of the ignorance induced by the media, partly because of the false feeling of euphoria due to the exponential growth, and another part because of the fact that our modern way of life is so addictive, a fact that I was constantly reminded with while ironically reading this book on mass produced paperback.

Still, I find this book, despite its shortfalls, compelling and beautifully written overall; its purpose is a sufficient excuse to include it in the list of "most important books" as many of its admirers suggest. I recommend it for anyone who cares about his future and that of his children, and who is curious to know how and why we keep on missing the forest for the trees, both figuratively and literally.

A very easy to read book yet thought provoking book.
Our society is built on teh use of ancient sunlight, we fight wars over it, since it is a limited resource. The civilizations before us did the same and in the end collapsed because they forgot something vitally important....the we are part of nature and it is part of us.
There is no pyramid where we are at teh top..just circles within circles intertwining in more ways then we can understand fully.
This book delves into the past, the far past where tribal structures were the norm, a few still managing to exist to modern times, and the more recent past, the 7,000 years we know as human civilization. It shows not just social structure but how that affected economic structure and how it affected the environment they lived in.
In the end we need to learn from these pasts, remember what we have forgotten as a species.
But though we need to change our view of teh planet and nature and ourselves, change how we live, our economies and society as a whole, it isnt an either or situation. We dont need to totally give up our tech and all those things we have learned, but we can use them to built a sustainable civilization that allows us to live as part of nature, in harmony with the world around us, and will take us far into the future. Perhaps our tech will even enable us to heal some of the scars our civilization has made on the face of teh Earth.
It all starts with us as individuals changing how we view our home and our place in it and then changing how we interact with it. All those small movements, ripples, will fan out and combine into bigger ripples, as we see around the world even today, ripples of change.
Primitive isnt living simply in harmony with nature, primitive is being irresponsible and immature and destroying the natural world around us for a quick buck that wont have any value when civilization collapses.

I'm impressed. I read this primarily as a theologian; I'm fascinated by the notion that "original sin" could stem from the moment 40.000 years ago when some tribe decided it was imperative to take more than it needed. I stumbled into Thom Hartman through an amazing movie, a documentary called "I Am". Also excellent.

Thorough book addressing climate change and over utilization of the planets natural resources.

I was so irritated with certain of the author's premises that I found myself arguing as much as reading. But then it is good to read things that you don't agree with - it offers the opportunity to learn something new. I learned a different way of looking at the "Older Cultures" - that is the tribal cultures. I learned a very interesting method of sustainable farming used in the Amazon by (I think) the Kayapo tribe. I really give the author credit for realizing that no specific measures can save the planet from the fix we've put it in - it will take a change of mindset. That is something that I do agree with wholeheartedly - and for that reason I feel the book is generally worth reading (3 stars). However, the book cannot possibly succeed in its aim of encouraging a different mindset, because it is written in a way to put off anyone who does not already pretty much already agree with him. He repeatedly denigrates the beliefs of many serious religious folk and even of most thinking modern secular folks. He wants to unite, but he takes the soap box for one political party - how does he think he is going to sell "cooperation" to members of the other party? The premise with which I took such exception is that "city-states" (that is all material progress - all civilization as we know it) is like a cancer .... not the excessive materialism, but all of it - the progress and the immoderation all together. He cannot find one kind word to say about material progress from Gilgamesh in Sumeria, through Egypt, China, Greece, Rome, Incas, etc. Well, friends, I read this book while I was marooned. There's nothing like sitting for 2 hours pounding corn in a hollowed out log with the end of a piece of rebar so you can feed your chickens to make you think 6 minutes of electricity and your little food mill is a gift of the intellect - that ancient wisdom, sustainability AND modest modern convenience would make the best of all worlds.

There are some good ideas in this book: sunlight as the basis for all atoms more complex than hydrogen (via novas); current sunlight as plants, animals that eat plants, and animals that eat animals; ancient sunlight as fossil fuels; the myriad of potentially cataclysmic risks to social and ecological collapse; the difference between older cultures for most of humanity and younger cultures since the agricultural revolution and permanent settlements; how stories shape our collective consciousness and relationships with each other and the environment; how corporations are powerful totalitarian social organizations, analogous to invader robots; and the recent rise of political authoritarianism.

In all of these, the author synthesizes several authors, to include Daniel Quinn, and tries to build on these ideas. Very good so far.

But things go wrong. The author suggests all we need to do is love more or change ourselves and everything will resonate outward into the universe. On the one hand, he offers faint criticism of the younger culture religions, to include Judaism and Christianity, but then embraces and promotes them without further criticism. (In my opinion, the world religions have outlived their purpose, which was primarily to support the survival and expansion of domination cultures). There was a lot of other unnecessary God and similar spiritual talk.

He similarly fawns over the US Founding Fathers, Constitution, and democracy, barely acknowledging any flaws.

Lastly, it was a bit wordy. Probably could have cut a third out.

Not a terrible book, but it could have been much better. Worth reading if you recognize the pitfalls.

The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight
A book report – by Bianca Minnaar

Overview
This book came about at a crossroads in my live, a time where I have been searching for a deeper connection to Pachamama and Gaia. My journeys, inspired by a deep seated spiritual awakening after an attempt on my life and a subsequent near death experience. Since the event, I have been suffering from Post traumatic stress disorder and I had to turn to nature and my innate ability to heal my own body to overcome my challenges.

As I started reading the book, I realized so many truths about how society in general has been selling us lies to further its destructive agendas and grow even further into it’s malignant state that is humanity today.
Initial thoughts
I work for an American company, after years of service in the financial sector of South Africa. I am rather patriotic and my ancestors fought and suffered through the Anglo Boere War and the books references to pollution and endangerment for life brought emotions of anger and frustration to my being. I was able to use the energy and frequencies I learned from the book to reconnect to my ancestors in subsequent journeying and was able to retrieve a few parts of my soul through it’s rituals and focus. This I am grateful for.
Seeking the Message
Initially it seemed all doom and gloom as I realize that a continued passive mindset will simply not change anything. Despair rose up within me as I felt trapped by the cancer growing around me and I asked spirit to guid me and show me the path to enlightenment and give me the answer to this darkness. I wished for the book to inspire an active plan for me to make a difference.

It worked, my daily rituals in channeling and meditation started taking shape around forming a deeper connection with my own body and nature around me. The food that I ingested and the liquids I drank became vehicles of light and I could hear Gaia speak to me more and more every day I tended my plants, animals and while grounding myself as I walked barefoot and engaged the witches fire to bless my orange juice every morning.

The book confirmed my findings, by telling me the message of hope, teaching me that there is a way to change everything, forming the tribe and working together and that that change has to start from within ourself.
The content
In the first part of the book the Author describes a great body of research. The formats of pollution, how they are proliferated and how our “Young Culture”, even though seemingly progressive is the root course of the problem rather than a light at the end of a dismal failure in it’s assurance of our survival and legacy for our future generations as we keep tapping and consuming our planets resources.
As the Author described our insatiable thrust for crude oil and how we derive our standard of living from it, I remembered the story of Moby-Dic, how we won’t have another chance and another source to quench this oil thrust again. How the Americans are acting like a drunk bully at a party gulping down all the alcohol and beating up anyone getting in the way by recycling nuclear waist into ammunition and warring with the Middle East to drive oil prices to an old time low, while draining the Aquifers dry to lose cities to chasms of fallen-in soil and even injecting human waist into the Aquifers to prevent the drying-up, only to end up with blood pressure medication, antidepressants and birth control hormones in four times the elevated levels in the produced Lettuce, that were occurring in the environment at that time.
The Author goes on to explain how this young culture destroyed and enslaved the old indigenous cultures who roamed and tended to the lands on this planet for thousands of years in painful detail and how this has been going on for several millennia and how these old cultures were vilified and made out to be savages for the sake of turning them into slaves and raping and pillaging the natural resources they were tending too for thousands of years in harmony.
The Author goes into detail describing the water and heat cycles of the planet and how things are changing not only because of global warming but also because the growing imbalance we have created with the young culture mentality of consumerism. Then the last part of the book, thankfully some inspiring content about how we can lead the charge to change our stories we tell, how we can change our societies to be more in balance and how we can bring about change to survive the coming storm and ensure a future for humanity as our biggest natural resource runs out, The ancient sunlight that is Crude oil.
In closing
I am humbled by all the research and authoring work put into the book and how the author was able to transpose his passion onto paper and into my heart. I learned a great deal and was able to facilitate the deep connection with the nature spirit I so desperately fight for every day and I feel less alone in this battle to save the planet and the souls stuck in the darkness.
It’s a challenging read, it might bring up emotions and make you question your opinions, your way of thinking and what you believe in, the hardest part might well be what you envision for your grandchildren and their children. The book contains both historical facts about social structure, political standpoints, humanitarian and anthropological ideals about how to overcome challenges you might have been oblivious too and the book might stir a deep anger within, as it shares details about how government, corporate and big pharma systematically destroy our health and the health of the animals and plants we so heavily rely on to survive in our seemingly simple, but yet complex ecosystem on planet earth.
You might expect to change your thinking around what you eat and what you purchase from the shops and how you use electricity and drive your car and spend you money and what it’s actually worth. Hopefully, you just might change the stories you tell yourself and those around you about what you accept from society, corporate and government institutions that affect your life and at least be more informed about what actually goes on around you.

Thom Hartmann is an amazing surge of energy on the planet! He's a radio host, author and I don't know what else yet, but I was recently introduced to him by a good friend and bought this book to see if he was all he was cracked up to be. Well, this book is amazing; so much so that I bought another, "Cracking the Code," which I haven't started yet.

Very powerful read. Hartmann proposes that the only way things can change is if we change our culture, starting with ourselves. An inspiring and hopeful look at the oil crisis and climate change. He discusses culture at length and provides a vivid history for how we got into the mess we are in now. I learned a lot from this book and hope to make some small but significant changes in my life.

one of the finest books combining spirituality and sustainability

In all my years of rating books on Goodreads, I've never written out a review before. This book, however, was so incredibly frustrating that I couldn't simply give it 3 stars (I almost gave it just 2) without some additional explanation.

I will start with some positives, because there certainly were a few. For instance, I do appreciate that the author recognizes that we're in quite a mess as a species (although his analysis falls well short of getting to the roots of the problem, which I'll touch on later). I also enjoyed the details he shared about Older Cultures. As someone who comes from a Younger Culture, I found there to be a lot of valuable information about alternative ways to structure societies. I also thought some of his 'solutions' weren't terrible advice, just not necessarily good 'solutions.'

Now for the problematic:

First, while he recognizes that we're on an unsustainable path, he never fully gets to the roots of just why this path is unsustainable; he never comes to the conclusion that civilization as a whole is unsustainable. Along the same lines, he introduces the reader to a significant number of positive aspects regarding Older Cultures and extremely negatively aspects of Younger Cultures, but then concludes that attempting to preserve our Younger Culture is the best way forward regardless. Sure, he encourages us to sprinkle in some Older Culture values along the way to make things ever so slightly less awful, but he doesn't seem interested in fundamentally changing anything (as evidenced by him encouraging people to simply vote for Democrats as one of his 'solutions.') He also praises the United States as being a less toxic - albeit corrupted - Younger Culture. I'm not sure how he arrived at that conclusion - given that the U.S. is arguably the most destructive entity this planet has ever seen - but he had lost me at that point in the book already anyway.

In conclusion, I'll just say that I'm grateful that I found thinkers such as John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen far before I discovered this book. (And honestly, Jensen's Endgame is the book that this book badly wants to be). You may still find a few useful elements in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, but please know that there are far, far better analyses out there that are much more worthy of your time.

"A call to consciousness combining spirituality and ecology that offers hope for the future
"As the world's population explodes, cultures and species are wiped out, and we have now reached the half-way point of our supplies of oil, humans the world over are confronting difficult choices about how to create a future which works.

"Thom Hartmann proposes that the only lasting solution to the crises we face is to re-learn the lessons our ancient ancestors knew -- that allowed them to live sustainably for hundreds of thousands of years -- but that we've forgotten.

"Hartmann shows how to find this new and yet ancient way of seeing the world and the life on and in it, allowing you to touch that place where the survival of humanity may be found."
~~back cover

This book put into words what I've thought for a long while -- that what makes us human, what differentiates us from the rest of the mammals -- is taking care of each other and the planet. Altruism, if you will. A quality which is sorely lacking in today's culture.

It's apparent -- at least to me -- that humanity cannot survive for much longer on the course we've chosen -- the reckless dependence on fossil fuels, and the accompanying disregard for the environment and any other species. Eventually, and perhaps sooner rather than later, it's all going to come crashing down around our ears. If humanity survives at all, it will be as stone age people. A grim fate, but the fact that we refuse to look at the consequences of our actions will inevitably lead us there. Unless ... unless we finally manage to face up to what we're doing, and change it.
Drastically.

"I am grateful for this book because the more of us who heed Thom Hartmann's passionate message, the more likely it is that our highest hopes, rather than our darkest fears, will come to pass."
~~John Robbins author of Diet for A New America

The best part of the book was the first third, or the section titled "We're Running Out of Ancient Sunlight." Hartmann does a good job in presenting a current climate change crisis through the ways our society has become dependent on fossil fuels, or ancient sunlight, to keep it going. To him, this parallels a Ponzi scheme, or a short term fix without realizing the long term consequences. Fossil fuels have resulted in exploding populations due to more food production, but they've also altered our climate, landscape, and water. Overall, life as it stands would not be sustainable without oil, and when peak oil hits, humanity is in for a rude awakening.

If you picked this book up because you like reading about the environment, I'd stop there. Parts two and three are more in the category of anthropology and the histories of civilization. Hartmann does a decent job in explaining the shift from Older Cultures (tribal, communal, man is inherently good) to Younger Cultures (dominant with isolated wealth and inequality, winner take all mentality), which has been destructive to our selves (slavery, mass accumulation of wealth for a small number of people, poverty, and famines) and our environment.

His solution is to essentially change our way of viewing the world and revert back to the older culture belief that was grounded in humanitarian virtues (his chapter on the founding fathers' construction of the constitution was particularly interesting). By respecting the world as something to be valued rather than controlled/dominated, we can solve this climate change problem. Maybe it deserved more than a two-star review, but the whole tribal lifestyle thing seemed relatively impractical. It was just less a environmental book and more of a sociology book, and I guess that's not what I was looking for.

This went from educational to ridiculous so abruptly, I felt like I fell through the floor of a library into an underground cult meeting.
The dude spends 100 pages citing all the environmental disasters we’re facing (which yeah are important), blaming it primarily on the “Younger Culture” of the past 7000 years. He specifically condemns the Bible for teaching us that exploitation of nature was super chill because humans are meant to “multiply and fill the earth and subdue it”. Sure, you can have that opinion. Not sure I’d generalize every person and modern culture in the world that easily but whatever.
It then turns out he’s a mega Christian??? And he thinks the solution to all this is getting enough people to pray on it?????
I’m sorry bro but your daily ritual of drinking red wine to remind yourself of Jesus’ blood won’t bring back the Amazon.
Also he throws in the most random pseudoscience for no reason. THERE IS NO HARVARD DOUBLE-BLIND STUDY THAT PROVES PRAYER HEALS PEOPLE FASTER. BIRDS DO NOT ALL HAVE A SHARED CONSCIOUSNESS. HOW DO I EVEN HAVE TO WRITE THAT SECOND ONE
And why is quantum entanglement even mentioned in this book? How do you spend two pages on “faster-than-light communication” which, believe it or not, is still impossible. Glad you’re well informed on physics man.
I absolutely respect his opinions even though I disagree with a lot of them. And spirituality is not an irrelevant thing, it has so much meaning for many people. But to so brazenly suggest our best course of action is to essentially do nothing, is frustrating at best. Yes changing our culture is crucial but you’re not gonna get that done with this book.

And unexpected, and warmly welcome, McKenna-infused call to action towards a de-centralised, nature-based way of life thay harks back to our ancient ancestors and dwindling indigenous tribes.

With a somewhat outdated rundown of the current state of affairs concerning natural resources like oil and water, Hartmann explains where we stand now and how we got there. His ideas on how we got here resonate with Riane Eisler's and Daniel Quinn's ideas, all the while having Terence McKenna in the undercurrent with his Archaic Revival.

I honestly did not expect this direction for the book, even as I am currently investiging communities, and am a staunch proponent of the archaic revival, and stand behind the ideas of McKenna, Quinn and Eisler.

The message is at the same time hopeful as overwhelming; creating a 'new' culture from the 'old'. It will prove to be our great work, and one that gives our future generations the promise of prosperity.

Only 4 stars because of the sometimes weak argumentation and lack of depth when mentioning phenomena or historic events, as well as the fact that the info on resources is outdated. 5 stars for the message though.

Recommended for newcomers to environmentalism, activism and/or the archaic revival (return to shamanic, tribal ways of life, as a means to a sustainable and meaningful future) - or if you want to know more about the connection between these topics.

EDIT: There appears to be a strong divide on the rating of this book, whereas many absolutely love it, and others appreciate the first half (the facts) and hating the last 'spiritual' part.

I would consider this to be a classic of modern environmental writing.
Hartmann goes into detail on the current state of the world (in 1999, but still), how we got to this point, and how we can change things for the better in his view.
His main point; that changing the predominant culture in our world from one that values wealth accrual, domination, and assimilation, to one that values community, resiliency, and the connection that we share with everything on our planet.
I share his beliefs. Reading this book was frightening, but also gave me a lens through which to have some hope about our future. I'm glad that he touched on the tendency of "Young Culture" to think that someone/technology/god will save them from themselves. The writing style was easy to understand, but rather repetitive at points.

My main gripe with Hartmann is that he fails, in my view, to consider how many people are in such deep and crushing poverty that they simply don't have the time/energy to change their lives in the ways that he says they should. Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, I don't know. I appreciate his positivity.

The first two chapters were informative. The first consists mostly of factual things about environmental issues such as climate change, unrenewable energy and water crisis, and deforestation and its consequences. The first chapter also tells us how we are affecting and damaging it. The second chapter tells us about the cultures we live and lived in, and how things got into the current condition. Basically it blames consumerism, capitalism, or any culture that promotes profit over anything without regarding any sustainability of human life. However, the third chapter, which discusses how we can solve these problems, is a bit of a turn off for me, and I didn't complete it. Thom Hartmann's religious view plays a significant part as he formulated this chapter. For example, Thom claims that every little thing we do echoes more than we think and we should never underestimate our actions. To support this claim, he used Harvard's study that says intercessory prayers speed up healing. When I googled this study, what I found out is more studies found less optimistic results.

I didn't find the first section of the book particularly compelling and one of my criticisms of the book in general was what felt at times like poor organization or the threading of the various concepts of the book together. For example, he spends a few pages describing how rising temperatures may release large amounts of methane hydrates from our oceans (and why this scenario could be very bad) and then rounds off the chapter with, "but... this probably won't happen...".

On another note that irked me, he pushes aside nuclear energy as part of our solution moving forward in a page or two and at times uses very specific argument points (in the case of nuclear power and other areas) which then lacks citation.

But! I was surprised at how much I resonated with the later sections of the book, how to change our culture we must make changes on a personal level. Plus some really memorable quotes. And that we should respect all life and how a viewpoint separating humans from nature is dangerous.

For the most part, I really loved this book!

It's filled with great information (sometimes that goes on for too long if you already know some of the info) and really helps brings a lot into perspective.

The ending section was a bit disappointing, though. I get what the author was trying to say. But, it felt very... "Let's get everyone together to hold hands and talk about rainbows". Yes, I do think the steps laid out are important... But, also, we need to be doing more than changing our individual mindset and hoping that we can get others to change their's too. But, let's face it... Some people are not going to change and a lot of them are in power causing a majority of the problems.

I was hoping for a bit more from the ending. Maybe some practice things we can do to help out while changing our mindset and waiting for enough people to get on board as well.

Love it for the info, not as big of a fan of the advice. Hope later renditions address this a bit.

Wonderful book. After finishing "Mindfulness" and then reading "Last Hours" I can see where mindfulness thinking will lead to a better world. By no longer thinking in terms of winners and losers and instead thinking in terms of relationship we, as a species, can live longer and save our world. The big problem/question that is not answered in this work is: how do we get the population down low enough so that current sunlight will be enough to make our world work?

Mindfulness will work as way to live, it works for many Old Cultures. It will not work for a Young Culture. Young Cultures work because they conquer. Old Cultures cooperate. By Cooperating Old Cultures will last longer and be much more sustainable. But to get to this point there will be a crash. Can Old Cultural ideas of cooperation, relationship, friendship, caring for strangers out last the fall of Young Culture. This will be the main issue facing mindful people V those who must win. Another question is will those my age see the beginnings of this crash caused by Young Culture thinking. This is also a question that Hartman could not answer. It should be interesting.

I really enjoyed the first 2/3 of the book, but the last 1/3 kind of goes off the rails. There are some interesting ideas in that last 1/3 but the over-reliance on self improvement to the exclusion of radical pushback I find disappointing. Nothing wrong with self-improvement but it's not going to save the planet.

The first 2/3 of the book, however, are right on point, describing well the predicament we're in and what got us here. The book was written in 1997, and yet we failed to heed its warnings (as we failed to heed the warnings of many other books written in the 20th century). Here we are 25 years later, and seemingly, we've learned nothing.

I really appreciate the author's perspective on our predicament, and the historical and cultural context in which these problems arose, along with the basic philosophy of reverence for nature.

In The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight Thom Hartmann synthesizes the work of some of my favorite writers and scholars into this culmination of their most profound ideas about the fate of the human race. Hartmann points his audience in a new direction, towards a better future and a more hopeful one than the self-destructive highway to hell we've been rushing on since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution (perhaps since the Agricultural Revolution). From Daniel Quinn to Jack Forbes, from Howard Zinn to Jared Diamond, from Joseph Campbell to Christ, Hartmann shows us that what has controlled the destiny of humankind throughout time is culture. Until we recreate the stories that shape our culture, the human race may not be around to see the next chapter.

Not what a initially expected or bought it in the first place. As i thought it was a book about climate change, but as it turns out it's a book that's more than that.

Before moving any further I must say it's been quite an experience. Started reading this 4 years ago but somehow got distracted and didn't take up on the challenge of finishing it only one fine day 4 years later.

It is definitely spiritually motivated, however some of the chapters sounded very hippie like, which quite a unexpected yet mysterious pathway I am not entirely familiar with. Nevertheless worth a read.

In short, if I were to analogize it into a song it would be "Heal the World" by Michael Jackson.

A most succinct explanation of how and why modern civilization has evolved into (I'm sad to say) a cancer upon this planet. But don't be put off by my choice of words because this cancer is very curable. It will however take each and every person to re-adjust our beliefs, thoughts and values to do so. This isn't hard to do when you understand the problem which is so beautifully laid out in the this book.