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.

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.

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.

This is interesting! The problem illustrated and the solution proposed in this book, most probably, cannot be understood and implemented respectively by the same people.
So the first part describing the problem in a very rock-solid,scientific way. I can imagine it may strongly appeal to those who are pragmatic in their ways of thinking.
Then comes the next part where you have to meditate, communicate with nature and live a spiritual life where most religious people would like although Mr.Hartmann describes the major religions as the core of the problem which is, in my humble opinion, true.
Utilizing the wisdom of older cultures like that of American Indians and its ways of preserving nature and communal lifestyle brings back to memory another book I read recently under the title:New World of Indigenous Resistance (Open Media)by Noam Chomsky, Benjamín Maldonado (Editor), Lois Meyer (Editor). In this book, most Indigenous figures in their correspondences with Mr.Chomsky describe the grim reality of their cultures as being under continuous "Culturcide".
Eventually, Mr.Hartmann's solution for our future problems is in big trouble.
Finally, when I checked online to validate the information regarding the effects of the Great Conveyor Belt on the weather in Europe and the American East Coast, I found out this theory was not conclusive and highly controversial.
Also, the reference to Mesopotamia as if it is present day Lebanon was a down point for me. Nevertheless, it was a mind stirrer.

Entenda-se que a Antiga Luz do Sol é o petróleo. O autor começa alertar-nos para o perigo do fim do mesmo. Mas depois vai mais longe e acaba por analisar toda a sociedade moderna e compara-la com as sociedades tribais. A ideia de fundo é que as sociedades tribais são mais felizes porque vivem em comunidade e em equilíbrio com a natureza. (Fez-me lembrar o filme Avatar em que de um lado temos os nativos de Pandora a viver em comunhão com o próprio planeta e por outro os humanos a quererem minerar o planeta. Quem não ficou do lado dos Na'vis?) Com estes argumentos (que terei que validar lendo algo mais sobre tribos) o autor conseguiu abanar um dos princípios da forma como vejo a sociedade, as ideologias políticas, i.e., o princípio que algumas coisas são utópicas por causa da natureza humana. E se afinal o que eu achava Natural for simplesmente Cultural? Poderemos afinal viver de outra forma? Poderemos equilibrar o avanço tecnológico e a forma de vivermos? Poderemos ser "tribalistas" e tecnológicos?
O autor na terceira e última parte do livre dá sugestões. Não vai tão longe como negar o avanço tecnológico já obtido mas sugere algumas mudanças para sermos mais felizes:
- consciência global - se muitos pensarmos algo esse algo transformar-se-á em verdade (a base da ciência noética e que se pode ler no último livro do Dan Brown - O Símbolo)
- praticar pequenos atos de bondade
- viver em comunhão com a natureza tendo uma pequena horta, mudando da cidade para povoações mais pequenas
- viver em comunidade (o que está relacionado com os dois pontos anteriores)...
Talvez esteja a ficar velho mas mesmo não estando certo dos factos apresentados pelo autor, as suas sugestões parecem-me tão apetecíveis... Compete-me agora optar.

I pretty much inhaled this book (it helped that I had six hours at school watching my children fill out bubbles on standardized tests). Thom Hartmann is a radio host and author; this is the second of his books that I've read. He writes about complex topics with both simplicity and depth, which is no mean feat. I like him: he's smart, passionate, and quite respectful to those who disagree with his positions.

This book is broken into three parts. The first part is a distressing overview of how man is utterly fouling our nest. No news there. What is highly interesting is the author's discussion of sunlight, and the connection between sunlight and carbon (oil, gas, coal, etc.) Hartmann describes sunlight in a unique and thought-provoking way. I was reminded of The Omnivore's Dilemma in that everything--everything--depends on sunlight, and that sunlight is an inexhaustible source of energy should we chose to harness it and use it wisely.

The second part discusses how we go to this point. Not too much new here, either: much of what Hartmann writes about echoes the writings of Daniel Quinn, whose Ishmael and The Story of B had such profound effects on my own thinking. Essentially, human beings lived in harmony with nature for 100,000 years. In the last 10,000, there has been a slow but inexorable change from "we are nature" to "we must dominate and control nature." Simply put: humans have ideas, and ideas have consequences. The consequences of some of our ideas are highly destructive.

The last part of the book was the most interesting, even as it was a bit out there. Essentially, Mr. Hartmann says you must change the way you see the world before the world will change, both philosophically and literally. We must tell new stories about ourselves, and understand that we are as much a part of nature as are animals, plants, and fish.

I am giving the ideas and information in this book short shrift: they are deep, complex, and compelling. There is much more I could say, but why don't I leave it to you to discover for yourself? Go on...read it!

If you'd like the Cliff Notes, Leonardo DiCaprio made a documentary based on this book called The 11th Hour. Good stuff.

Most books like this leave me feeling depressed and helpless. This one, though...it was like looking behind the curtain of reality (like the Quinn books). More and more I feel as though I am living in The Matrix in this country. What we see is not real: it is an illusion that can be torn away by a good, stiff wind. Smoke and mirrors. Mirages. Wispy phantasms.

Ancient sunlight refers to fossil fuels - coal, oil, and natural gas. These fuels are stores of sunlight that fell upon the earth hundreds of millions of years ago over a time period that itself lasted tens or hundreds of millions of years. Beginning only about 150 years ago humans began extracting and burning these fuels at increasingly obscene rates so that we now are threatened with their imminent exhaustion within mere years or at best decades.

The main focus of this book, however, was not (as I had expected) the consequences of rapid depletion of non-renewable natural resources and how to avoid or alleviate them. Instead, the author goes to great lengths to explain the superiority of primitive sustainable cultures over our modern, exploitive, non-sustainable culture.

In the last third of the book he describes what we can do about the upcoming disaster as the fuel that feeds our culture and makes our huge world population possible becomes increasingly more scarce and more expensive. His solution is to simply learn about primitive cultures, individually try to emulate them as much as possible, and spread the word to others. At first I thought this was ridiculous -- that's no solution at all. The world could barely support a tenth of our population under those conditions. I also recognized that much of what the author said was not even correct. For example, his continual praise of primitive culture's harmony with nature contradicts much of what we know about them. Today we are quite certain that these primitive people hunted many large, slow-moving mammals (e.g. the wooly mammoth) to extinction in a relatively short period of time.

Eventually, I realized, however, that the main premise of his argument is actually correct. Technology is not going to save us. There is not going to be a magic market-driven solution to get us out of the huge hole we have dug ourselves into. At some point in the near future our culture of materialism and consumerism is going to decline and come to an end. Thus, there is no solution to save our culture and our civilization. The only solution is an individual solution -- a return to the kind of lifestyle that sustainably supported all of our ancestors for thousands of generations.

I enjoyed this book because of its topic, which has always been fascinating to me. It is very similar to Jerry Mander's In the Absence of the Sacred which is probably my favorite on the subject. Both of these books contrast the failure of modern culture and technology with the proven endurance and success of primitive cultures.

Call to action - take some responsibility for your part in the destruction or thriving of life on earth. You're either part of the problem or the solution - no innocent passive witnesses.

Need to change the story/idea/mythology of our culture.
We are currently an immature culture, where we view ourselves as separate from the rest, the most important, wanting immediate gratification without thinking of tomorrows consequences. Ideal customers for religious cult of consumerism. TV/information saturation constantly adding to the momentum of the consumerist/materialism ideas. Need to unplug.

Maslows Hierarchy of Needs - fundamental human need is safety/security. This should be our widespread goal so everyone can focus on self actualisation - realisation of full potential - 'biological destiny'. Most live in perpetual state of insecurity - wealth perceived as goods/money is not assured - then escape this fear/insecurity with TV/consumerism.

Consciousness evolution - know thyself. Core message of all sacred teachings. Create your own self > change world.

Albert Einstein - "The Ancients knew something which we seem to have forgotten".
They knew some shit. We should try to remember some elements that led them to live happier, more fulfilled and sustainable lives. Integrate into our modern context to live more balanced lifestyle and sustainable.

Remember sacred element to life that we've forgotten. Vitality/divinity of life rather than current dullness.
"It was a perfectly ordinary moment, filled with spirit" - Touching of the presence of life itself.

Yet another dismal view of our species' demise.

This was a really interesting breakdown from a 2004 perspective but also how this applies nearly 18 yrs later.

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.

Some sections deserved a 5 star, others maybe 2 or 3. Entranced by the concept of morphic resonance....it really struck a chord.