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The Environment: A History of the Idea
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 a way of imagining the web of interconnection and consequence of which the natural world is made.
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.
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 a must-listen book for anyone who wants to help protect the environment from the numerous threats it faces today.
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.
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 a must-listen book for anyone who wants to help protect the environment from the numerous threats it faces today.
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Published January 10, 2019
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July 27, 2023
يعرض هذا الكتاب لتاريخ نشوء فكرة البيئة في الأوساط الأكاديمية، الدوائر السياسية و حتى المستويات الشعبية كردة فعل للحالة التي شهدها كوكب الأرض عقب الثورة الصناعية و ربما قبل ذلك أيضا. يضع البيئة جانبا و يكتفي ببسط تاريخ طرح هذه الفكرة كشبكة واسعة مترابطة من العلوم المختلفة و المواقف السياسية. إنها الفكرة التي أراد البشر تكوينها عن هذا المفهوم : البيئة . لهذه الغاية يجرد كتبا ، مؤتمرات ومقالات أيقونية، ربما أهمها هو الربيع الصامت ل
Silent Spring كونه ذا أسبقية تاريخية في الطرح
ثم يعرض لأربعة أبعاد مرتبطة بفكرة البيئة (أجدها مستحقة لمزيد من الشرح) المستقبل، الخبرة، الثقة بالأرقام و رابعا القياس و قابلية التوقع.
يمضي الكتاب بعد ذلك (هذا فصل شيق بالنسبة لي) في وصف تقاطر المعطيات الرقمية التي ساهمت الحواسيب في التعامل معها بشكل جيد ليدرك الناس أن النمو الديموغرافي مع محدودية موارد الكوكب، يحث بنا السير إلى هاوية مظلمة و كل ما يمكننا فعله هو تأخير ذلك.
فنمط السلوك الأساسي لنظام العالم هو النمو المتسارع للسكان و رأس المال، متبوعا بالانهيار
Silent Spring كونه ذا أسبقية تاريخية في الطرح
ثم يعرض لأربعة أبعاد مرتبطة بفكرة البيئة (أجدها مستحقة لمزيد من الشرح) المستقبل، الخبرة، الثقة بالأرقام و رابعا القياس و قابلية التوقع.
يمضي الكتاب بعد ذلك (هذا فصل شيق بالنسبة لي) في وصف تقاطر المعطيات الرقمية التي ساهمت الحواسيب في التعامل معها بشكل جيد ليدرك الناس أن النمو الديموغرافي مع محدودية موارد الكوكب، يحث بنا السير إلى هاوية مظلمة و كل ما يمكننا فعله هو تأخير ذلك.
فنمط السلوك الأساسي لنظام العالم هو النمو المتسارع للسكان و رأس المال، متبوعا بالانهيار
August 16, 2023
In this ambitious but concise book, three prominent “environmental humanities” scholars provide a history of the “environment” not as a physical space, but as the idea of that physical space. Or, as they put it: “[t]he environment is all around us. This book asks the question, Where did it come from?” [11]. In true environmental humanities fashion, the book addresses the topic from multiple disciplinary angles. Its early chapters focus heavily on literary works, before focusing on economic models, and finally ending in discussions about climate- and earth system sciences. The authors put forward four “Dimensions of Environment”, being the future, expertise, trust in numbers (explicitly based on Theo Porter’s coinage of the term, i.e. the conceptualisation of society as an engineering project, making it predictable), and scale/scalability. These dimensions are frequently invoked over the course of the book.
Early chapters focus on the concepts of “expertise” and “resource” management. The latter mainly involves a history of (neo-)Malthusian arguments concerning population and limits to growth, as a group of (mainly American, mainly male) people used mathematical formulae to abstract the economy into categories that could be mapped onto the “environment”. Chapters four and five look at the emergence of terms like “ecology”, “ecosystem”, and “climate”, and how these became incorporated into the “environment” idea. Key here is the idea that scientific expertise was never a neutral form of expertise in matters climate, as it arose alongside new political and social bodies designed to govern the environment. This confluence between environmental science and global environmental governance lies at the heart of the final two chapters, which cover aspects like “sustainable development”, “globalisation”, “safe operating spaces”, and “planetary boundaries” . The authors point out that though the Earth is “one”, the world is not: there are always a multitude of stakeholders and voices on the global stage, which complexify governance. Environmental sciences have been unable to overcome this inherent complexity. The body of scientific expertise that deals with these kinds of governance concepts, that of Earth-system science, is more political in nature, aiming to “get things done” and serving as a bridge between “institutional capacity and intellectual ambition” [156-7].
The big “ideas” that the book tackles are predominantly explored through mini-biographies of influential thinkers, writers, and scholars/scientists. I was personally not as gripped by these individual narratives as I was by the broader perspectives on these changing ideas (compare, for example, the style of chapter 2 with chapter 5), but I can recognise the need for both. The purpose of these narratives, whether small or large in scale, is to underline that the story of the modern “environment” idea is simultaneously scientific and political: “for all the claims of scientific bodies to present information, limits, and solutions in a strictly neutral mode, in the end environmental issues are still being associated with parties and ideologies on the established political spectrum” [146].
Comparing this book to Etienne Benson’s Surroundings (published only two years later), it’s noticeable that the authors take the environment to be an evolving concept, but the history of its evolution is coherent and additive (new concepts like ecology and climate are incorporated into the big-tent concept of “environment”). Benson, on the other hand, seems to support the view that there have been different, fundamentally separate understandings of “environment” over time that gained or lost popularity in certain contexts. The current dominant understanding is the one that arose out of post-WWII climate sciences, with their computer models and global-scale thinking, but it should not be seen as a direct successor to earlier theories of environment. The authors of this book also begin their narrative in this post-WWII context (highlighting that it marks the start of the “Great Acceleration”), yet when they draw on earlier source material (particularly British, American, and French thinkers from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries), they take these to be the pre-histories of our modern notion of “environment”. Whereas this position sounds more compelling as a narrative, I think Benson’s book does a better job of illustrating how our understanding of environment not only has changed but can change. There need not necessarily be one hegemonic understanding of environment (several of Benson’s examples are quite limited in scope); provided we find ourselves in a situation where our circumstances demand (or facilitate) a different understanding, there will be opportunities for change.
I don’t think the authors of this book reject the possibility of change. But by providing a “this has all been leading up to this” kind of narrative, the scope for change feels somewhat limited. They provide a summary of what they believe ‘environmental humanists’ can do to “situate the human in geological terms” and “the nonhuman […] in ethical terms” [171]: become effective communicators, and acting as persuaders where scientists fail to do so; “get in on the game”, and integrate their environmental expertise into the form that has emerged over the past decades; foster explicitly environmental humanities, i.e. take the insights humanists already provide and apply them to environmental issues. These are valid and important approaches to take, but they all seem to tacitly acknowledge that the earth-system way of understanding the “environment” is the main and enduring way, a landmark which the humanities can only hope to orient themselves by. This might be an unfair reading of their text, but it’s the impression I had after just finishing.
Both books I think still suffer from an Anglo-centric bias, one that is barely acknowledged. Given the dominance of the Anglosphere – particularly the United States – in matters global climate, it is perhaps not surprising that this book features so many British, North American, and Australian figures, publications, and conferences. But it begs the question whether a history of the idea of the environment that incorporates other stories would look much different?
Early chapters focus on the concepts of “expertise” and “resource” management. The latter mainly involves a history of (neo-)Malthusian arguments concerning population and limits to growth, as a group of (mainly American, mainly male) people used mathematical formulae to abstract the economy into categories that could be mapped onto the “environment”. Chapters four and five look at the emergence of terms like “ecology”, “ecosystem”, and “climate”, and how these became incorporated into the “environment” idea. Key here is the idea that scientific expertise was never a neutral form of expertise in matters climate, as it arose alongside new political and social bodies designed to govern the environment. This confluence between environmental science and global environmental governance lies at the heart of the final two chapters, which cover aspects like “sustainable development”, “globalisation”, “safe operating spaces”, and “planetary boundaries” . The authors point out that though the Earth is “one”, the world is not: there are always a multitude of stakeholders and voices on the global stage, which complexify governance. Environmental sciences have been unable to overcome this inherent complexity. The body of scientific expertise that deals with these kinds of governance concepts, that of Earth-system science, is more political in nature, aiming to “get things done” and serving as a bridge between “institutional capacity and intellectual ambition” [156-7].
The big “ideas” that the book tackles are predominantly explored through mini-biographies of influential thinkers, writers, and scholars/scientists. I was personally not as gripped by these individual narratives as I was by the broader perspectives on these changing ideas (compare, for example, the style of chapter 2 with chapter 5), but I can recognise the need for both. The purpose of these narratives, whether small or large in scale, is to underline that the story of the modern “environment” idea is simultaneously scientific and political: “for all the claims of scientific bodies to present information, limits, and solutions in a strictly neutral mode, in the end environmental issues are still being associated with parties and ideologies on the established political spectrum” [146].
Comparing this book to Etienne Benson’s Surroundings (published only two years later), it’s noticeable that the authors take the environment to be an evolving concept, but the history of its evolution is coherent and additive (new concepts like ecology and climate are incorporated into the big-tent concept of “environment”). Benson, on the other hand, seems to support the view that there have been different, fundamentally separate understandings of “environment” over time that gained or lost popularity in certain contexts. The current dominant understanding is the one that arose out of post-WWII climate sciences, with their computer models and global-scale thinking, but it should not be seen as a direct successor to earlier theories of environment. The authors of this book also begin their narrative in this post-WWII context (highlighting that it marks the start of the “Great Acceleration”), yet when they draw on earlier source material (particularly British, American, and French thinkers from the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries), they take these to be the pre-histories of our modern notion of “environment”. Whereas this position sounds more compelling as a narrative, I think Benson’s book does a better job of illustrating how our understanding of environment not only has changed but can change. There need not necessarily be one hegemonic understanding of environment (several of Benson’s examples are quite limited in scope); provided we find ourselves in a situation where our circumstances demand (or facilitate) a different understanding, there will be opportunities for change.
I don’t think the authors of this book reject the possibility of change. But by providing a “this has all been leading up to this” kind of narrative, the scope for change feels somewhat limited. They provide a summary of what they believe ‘environmental humanists’ can do to “situate the human in geological terms” and “the nonhuman […] in ethical terms” [171]: become effective communicators, and acting as persuaders where scientists fail to do so; “get in on the game”, and integrate their environmental expertise into the form that has emerged over the past decades; foster explicitly environmental humanities, i.e. take the insights humanists already provide and apply them to environmental issues. These are valid and important approaches to take, but they all seem to tacitly acknowledge that the earth-system way of understanding the “environment” is the main and enduring way, a landmark which the humanities can only hope to orient themselves by. This might be an unfair reading of their text, but it’s the impression I had after just finishing.
Both books I think still suffer from an Anglo-centric bias, one that is barely acknowledged. Given the dominance of the Anglosphere – particularly the United States – in matters global climate, it is perhaps not surprising that this book features so many British, North American, and Australian figures, publications, and conferences. But it begs the question whether a history of the idea of the environment that incorporates other stories would look much different?
September 22, 2019
A really good history of science take on the changing definitions, traditions, and scholarship that has created the contemporary idea of the environment. Along the way, Warde, Robin, and Sorlin reach back into the histories of political action, scientific disciplines and temperaments, and predictions of the future to clarify how the environment and climate change got wrapped up together, to establish the bona fides of the environment as a future-oriented, expert-driven, and model-based imagination of interrelationships between living creatures and unliving things the world over.
It's a really good, well-researched and clearly written book - although the final chapter does become a little repetitive. That said, it's also a very science-based book: there are few moments of real outreach toward humanities- and social science-based understandings of environmental issues. This is a huge lacuna and quite frankly a testament to the arrogance of the idea that "the idea of the environment" has been created by scientific experts. Not only do the authors confess themselves unable to reconcile the long history of the concept with its contemporary, globalized operation, they also reveal weaknesses in their understanding of politics, human aspirations, and cultural richness as they give science the prime position and agency in their story. So that's a regrettable oversight!
On balance, a useful, clear, and very rich book, and more than worth your time. The topic could not be more timely, and the three co-authors are excellent guides through their chosen subject material. It's just an enormously one-sided history!
It's a really good, well-researched and clearly written book - although the final chapter does become a little repetitive. That said, it's also a very science-based book: there are few moments of real outreach toward humanities- and social science-based understandings of environmental issues. This is a huge lacuna and quite frankly a testament to the arrogance of the idea that "the idea of the environment" has been created by scientific experts. Not only do the authors confess themselves unable to reconcile the long history of the concept with its contemporary, globalized operation, they also reveal weaknesses in their understanding of politics, human aspirations, and cultural richness as they give science the prime position and agency in their story. So that's a regrettable oversight!
On balance, a useful, clear, and very rich book, and more than worth your time. The topic could not be more timely, and the three co-authors are excellent guides through their chosen subject material. It's just an enormously one-sided history!
August 14, 2019
I was looking for a text that would help to explain scientific ideas about climate change and the environment without my needing a degree in biology. This book did a fantastic job of hitting a nice challenging sweet spot, forcing me to call upon some basic knowledge gained in college general education classes but allowing me to also raise to a better understanding of the overall themes.
That said, this book focuses a lot on the evolution of the scientific idea of "the environment" and how that word has evolved over time. This is a great and timely read that is accessible for most readers.
That said, this book focuses a lot on the evolution of the scientific idea of "the environment" and how that word has evolved over time. This is a great and timely read that is accessible for most readers.
Read
October 4, 2019Fun to read, but limited framing. Kinda stuck on the literal word "environment", not even including "umwelt" or basic religious weather concepts like the Flood not even mentioned as part of the "idea" history. So as other point out, limited frame. Needs to say more about "specialization" and the history of how that's wrapped into the paradigm's elusiveness. Kinda short changing the russians.
February 20, 2021
As the title suggests, this co-authored book, drawing on the distinct expertise of three historians, outlines the history of "environment" as a concept. It does a nice job, in a fairly short book, of integrating the range of different forms of expertise that individuals and institutions have brought to bear on the concept, and ends with some useful thoughts about the way forward for the environmental humanities.
October 29, 2021
Excellent book that gives me so much context to explore how things changed for growers in my research area in the first decade of the settlement (the 1950s). I'm keen to see what has been written for the same period about the connected rise of environmentalism.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews