ERST-4607H: Environmental History

Lecture #3: Global Environmental History

➢ How should we think about the history of planet Earth?
➢ What about the “Anthropocene?” Is it a useful way of thinking about global
environmental history?

Other global perspectives…

➢ So, can present environmental history in terms of the entire global environment… but
doesn't tell us much about history! (What is happening in specific local places? How are
these changes affecting humans or other species? The limitations of global & material
history.)

The Anthropocene concept:

➢ Putting human-caused global change in historical/geological context – a new geological
epoch (after the Holocene), in which humans dominate the global environment
➢ It is a very active debate

Defining the Anthropocene:

➢ The Anthropocene is sometimes used to simply describe the time during which humans
have had a substantial impact on our planet. Whether or not we are in a new geological
age, we are part of a complex, global system, and the evidence of our impact on it has
become clear.
➢ In terms of the geological record, fallout or other contaminants, extinctions, or
“technofossils” (e.g., plastics) and global environmental changes – “Great Acceleration”
(c. 1950).
The “Great Acceleration” – Socio-Economic Trends

The “Great Acceleration – Environmental Trends

➢ Or, earlier global changes – possible turning points…

○ Pleistocene extinctions (mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, etc.)
○ Early agriculture (c.7000 BP)
○ Large-scale transformation of agriculture (c. 2000 BP)
○ Decline of American Indigenous populations, reforestation, and decline of CO2
(c. 1492-1650) – “Orbis spike”
○ Industrial Revolution (since 1800; including climate change);
○ Global radioactive and toxic fallout (since 1950)

Key idea: scale of impacts

➢ Big things transformed (not just shores, but oceans; not just city air, but global
atmosphere)
➢ No place left untouched by humans(including poles)
Crawford Lake (July 2023): sediments designated as scientific confirmation of Anthropocene
❖ Now, an international team of scientists who painstakingly catalog those layers has
declared that Earth moved into a new phase of its history about 73 years ago and that the
best piece of crust in the world to represent it is a tiny lake in southern Ontario. They
have nominated Crawford Lake, barely an hour’s drive west of Toronto, as the global
example of the beginning of the Anthropocene, the epoch when humans began
irrevocably shaping the planet’s fate.
❖ This humble little lake's chemistry is among the rarest in the world. For one thing, the
lake is meromictic, meaning its top and bottom layers never mix. The ratio of its depth of
24 meters and its surface area of 2.4 hectares prevents mixing. But in addition, the bottom
layer contains oxygen.
BUT should Anthropocene be defined in political (not just scientific) terms?
➢ Overconsumption, population growth, urban expansion, atomic weapons and Cold War,
industrial agriculture, etc/
➢ Or: in terms of colonialism (Davis & Todd 2016)
What are the political implications?
➢ Who is responsible? Everyone? Or must acknowledge inequalities?
➢ How should “we” act?
○ By managing the planet wisely?
○ Or is managing (dominating) the problem? Should we pull back, be humble and
seek the reverse colonialism?
➢ What implications for “wilderness,” if nothing is “wild” (untouches)? What is there to
protect?
➢ What implications for ecological restoration: restore back to what?

● What is it about defining environmental history in terms of changes in the global

environment – humanity as global environmental factors
● Debate about whether to define it scientifically (in terms of physical/environmental
changes), or in social terms
● Much debate about the political implications
★ But how do you think about global changes in relation to peoples’ lives/experiences and
ideas?
★ We can consider this in terms of what gets counted as a “global” environmental event: “22
events”

What counts as a “global” event?

● Memories of pollution from “outside”, 2013 (Japan)
● The assassination of Chico Mendes, 1988 (Brazil)
● Chernobyl, 1986 (Soviet Union)
 ● Stockholm Conference, 1972
● Earth Day, 1970 (US)
● Santa Barbara oil spill, 1969 (US)
● “Operation Rhino,” Kwazulu-Natal, 1961 (South Africa)
● Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945 (Japan)
● Chainsaw begins to chew through world’s forests, 1929
● Invention of nitrogen-fixing techniques, 1913 (artificial fertilizers)
● Big Blowup, 1910 (forest fire, US)
● US Bureau of Reclamation, 1902 (dams)
● Invention of mass destruction mining, 1899 (US)
● Anthropogenic climate change, c. 1880
● Beginning of global career of phylloxera, 1884 (insect pest, grapes)
● World first oil well, 1859 (US)
● Plowing up world’s grasslands, c 1950
● Dust viel event, 536 CE
● Neolithic agricultural revolution, c. 10,000 BCE
● Crossing of Wallace’s Line, c. 60,000 BCE (Australia)
● Chicxulub, c. 65 million BCE (asteroid)
● Tokyo Bay mega-quake of 20-something (imaginary future)
What can we learn from these? What makes them “global” events? What’s missing (or doesn’t
belong)

Making sense of 22 global events…

➢ Single events (often representing larger issues) and long-term trends
➢ Changes in global habitats and in physical processes
➢ Physical changes in planet and human changes
➢ Many events combine physical and human changes
➢ Many connections between global and local
➢ Many can also be debated
○ Is climate change a global or local process?
○ Is environmentalism a global or local idea?

Linking global change and local places…

2 ways of thinking about these links:
a) In terms of single events (for example: volcanic eruptions)
b) Or long-term trends
Example of local effects of long-term global trends:
Environmental history of Trent:
➢ Disease and displacement of Indigenous peoples starting in the 1630s (measles,
influenza, scarlet fever, smallpox)
 ➢ European /imperial surveying and settlement – global expansion of the British Empire
➢ Arrival of new species (especially from Europe – crops and weeds) – Columbian
Exchange
➢ Transportation networks (railways)
➢ Use of fossil fuels (coal and then oil)
★We can see global change right outside our door

Summary/key points:
Aspects of global change and history:
➢ Making sense of global change: the Anthropocene – a new geological era?
➢ Complicated Questions: what makes a global event “global”? – the 22 events
➢ Connecting global and local change (example: imperialism – human and ecological)
➢ Need to see the global in the local and the local in the global