An in-depth look at the history of the environment.
Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being
destroyed? Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children
and grandchildren? Is the world sick? Can it be healed? Less than a
lifetime ago, these questions would have made no sense. This was not
because our ancestors had no impact on nature--nor because they were
unaware of the serious damage they had done. What people lacked was an
idea: a way of imagining the web of interconnection and consequence of
which the natural world is made. Without this notion, we didn't have a
way to describe the scale and scope of human impact upon nature. This
idea was "the environment."
In this fascinating book, Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin
trace the emergence of the concept of the environment following World
War II, a period characterized by both hope for a new global order and
fear of humans' capacity for almost limitless destruction. It was at
this moment that a new idea and a new narrative about the planet-wide
impact of people's behavior emerged, closely allied to anxieties for the
future. Now we had a vocabulary for talking about how we were changing
nature: resource exhaustion and energy, biodiversity, pollution,
and--eventually--climate change.
With the rise of "the environment," the authors argue, came new
expertise, making certain kinds of knowledge crucial to understanding
the future of our planet. The untold history of how people came to
conceive, to manage, and to dispute environmental crisis, The
Environment is essential reading for anyone who wants to help protect
the environment from the numerous threats it faces today.
