I read very interesting book - http://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/download/publications/perspectives/2011_perspectives/issue6.pdf
I read an interview with Verena Winiwarter, Austrian Academic of the Year, which shows that environmental historians are important in society. The complete interview is available - http://seeingthewoods.org/2014/02/13/an-interview-with-verena-winiwarter-austrian-academic-of-the-year/
I think that environmental history can help. Today's environmental problems can be understood only if we study the similar crisis in past societies. This will be possible only when investigate environmental values and behaviour of past societies.
Environmental History is an essential part of World History. Human beings interact in eco-system. They produce and reproduce themselves under physical conditions which we study in the discipline of history. Anthropocene has become a reality. We can understand its consequences in Environmental History. However, it must be situated in a social context. Otherwise, it may remain pedantic.
I think the environment as an history on its own. It is important to ackonwledge and understand historical changes in ecosystems and species. The environment has changed on its own, and according the the human introduced modifications, and then humans have changed accordingly. There is no environmental history without humans but on the other human history cannot be separate from the environment. We are part of it.
A new publication from the Rachel Carson Centre has also a bearing on this question: The edges of environmental history. Available from http://www.environmentandsociety.org/perspectives/2014/1/edges-environmental-history-honouring-jane-carruthers
I agree with Christina and Sukhdev: Environmental History is as relevant for our understanding of today's world as any other branch of history. And exactly as in the other branches of history, it is very important to include social, economical, technological, scientific etc. contexts of any phenomenon we research. If we can avoid too simple answers as in «humans did it» and broaden the understanding of the many complex interdependencies our world is made of, we might contribute to the solution of some of our problems.
Good question. Yes, I think it is important also. I remember reading Ponting's Green History of the World. Social "progress", with greater population and higher energy use, is closely connected with how the wastes (and entropy) are handled without being overwhelmed. The many historical lessons and attempts to model this can hopefully illuminate the issues we are currently dealing with.
I think the Carson Center's book is useful and worth reading. I am not sure that these arguments about the future of environmental history have gone as far as the might. An alternative -- which a growing network of scholars call the world-ecology synthesis -- argues that, instead of charting the environmental consequences OF modernity, we might instead go deeper. The world-ecology alternative suggests that we conceptualize the major processes of modernity (such as industrialization, or imperialism) as bundles of human and extra-human natures. This is a view of modernity -- and not just modernity -- AS environmental history, as a history of power, production, and wealth as co-produced by humans and the rest of the nature.
Environmental history is the other side of human history , with the environmental history , the history of human society is complete .
Another development is the rise of the umbrella field of environmental humanities. Environmental history is part of this wider field and this opens new possibilities for collaborations and raises new questions. This will surely shape and inform the future direction of environmental history.
Thank you Jan, I completely agree with you. But it is important to keep the environmental humanities in ongoing communication with the natural sciences.
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