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environmental history

Articles tagged with this keyword discuss the study of environmental history, and how research and writing about environmental history have changed over time.
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A History of Noise

Whether we consider the sounds of nature to be pleasant or menacing depends largely on our ideologies.
by Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on June 1, 2018
Photo of a blue bin filled with recyclable garbage.

Petrochemical Companies Have Known for 40 Years that Plastics Recycling Wouldn't Work

Despite knowing that plastic recycling wouldn't work, new documents show how petrochemical companies promoted it anyway.
by Joseph Winters via Grist on February 20, 2024
A photograph of a tree's rings.

The Fellowship of the Tree Rings: A ClioVis Project

The disparate and intriguing connections found in environmental history, one tree ring at a time.
by Aidan Dresang via Not Even Past on February 20, 2024
Man holding a rare Razorback Sucker fish from the Colorado River.
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At 50 the Endangered Species Act is Worth Celebrating

Before the Endangered Species Act, the federal government had actually encouraged the killing of certain species.
by Laura J. Martin via Made By History on December 28, 2023
The Cross-Bronx Expressway, April 1971. Photo by Dan McCoy/Environmental Protection Agency/National Archives

How the New York of Robert Moses Shaped my Father’s Health

My dad grew up in Robert Moses’s New York City. His story is a testament to how urban planning shapes countless lives.
by Katie Mulkowsky via Aeon on November 3, 2023
Trees burning in a forest fire.

We Are Witnessing the First Stages of Civilization’s Collapse

Will our own elites perform any better than the rulers of Chaco Canyon, the Mayan heartland, and Viking Greenland?
by Michael Klare via The Nation on August 22, 2023
Close-up view of a flour beetle under a microscope, showcasing its intricate body structure and features.

Bugging Out

The complicated, ever-changing, millennia-long relationship between insects and humans.
by Ian Rose via JSTOR Daily on May 31, 2023
DDT being sprayed at Jones Beach in New York in 1945.

The Problem With Silent Spring Environmentalism

A new history of the environmental movement places too much emphasis on famous figures like Rachel Carson and shies away from confronting failures.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on January 10, 2023
Yellow oily paper with writing

Smell, History, and Heritage

Smell’s diffuse nature requires crossing the boundaries of several subfields within the historical discipline, but also moving beyond the boundaries of history alone.
by Cecilia Bembibre, William Tullett, Stephanie Weismann, Melanie A. Kiechle, Inger Leemans, Anna Chen, Hsuan L. Hsu, Xuelei Huang, Duane Jethro, Jorge Otero-Pailos via American Historical Review on April 26, 2022
Students paddling rafts on Milwaukee River

Remember When Earth Day Used to Be Cool?

Today, the holiday is just a chance for ExxonMobil to release nonsensical ad campaigns. But once upon a time, it was a radical success story.
by Liza Featherstone via The New Republic on April 21, 2022
<p>Thick smoke from multiple forest fires shrouds El Capitan (right) and the granite walls of Yosemite Valley on Saturday 12 September 2020, in Yosemite National Park, CA.<em> Photo Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/Getty</em></p>

What Yosemite’s Fire History Says About Life in the Pyrocene

Fire is a planetary feature, not a biotic bug. What can we learn from Yosemite’s experiment to restore natural fire?
by Stephen Pyne via Aeon on December 24, 2021
Photograph of an American Northwest forest.

The Long-Lost Tale of an 18th-Century Tsunami, as Told by Trees

Local evidence of the cataclysm has literally washed away over the years. But Oregon’s Douglas firs may have recorded clues deep in their tree rings.
by Max G. Levy via Wired on September 23, 2021
Drawing of 19th century woman in science laboratory

Scientists Understood Physics of Climate Change in the 1800s – Thanks to a Woman Named Eunice Foote

The results of Foote's simple experiments were confirmed through hundreds of tests by scientists in the US and Europe. It happened more than a century ago.
by Sylvia G. Dee via The Conversation on July 22, 2021

Wild Rice Waters

The resurgence of the wild rice harvest seeks to tells the story of settler colonialism, tribal kinship and ecological stewardship.
by Emily Hicks, Melody R. Stein via Places Journal on June 14, 2021

America’s Conflicted Landscapes

A nation that identifies itself with nature begins to fall apart when it can no longer agree on what nature is.
by David E. Nye via The MIT Press Reader on April 20, 2021

John Muir in Native America

Muir's romantic vision obscured Indigenous ownership of the land—but a new generation is pulling away the veil.
by Rebecca Solnit via Sierra Club on March 2, 2021
Mountains in California.

The Lost Rivers of Owens Valley

Water—who owns it, who uses it—has shaped this landscape from the Paiutes’ irrigation canals to the Los Angeles aqueduct.
by Frederic Wehrey via New York Review of Books on February 16, 2021
The ocean

Chemical Warfare’s Home Front

Since World War I we’ve been solving problems with dangerous chemicals that introduce new problems.
by Elizabeth Kolbert via New York Review of Books on February 11, 2021

Sea Shanties and the Whale Oil Myth

Oil companies like to point to the demise of the whaling industry as an example of market-based energy solutions. The reality is much more complicated.
by Kate Aronoff via The New Republic on January 22, 2021
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The Lines That Shape Our Cities

Connecting present-day environmental inequalities to redlining policies of the 1930s.
by Esri via American Panorama on December 18, 2020
Drawings of houses

How Trees Made Us Human

More than iron, stone, or oil, wood explains human history.
by Daniel Immerwahr via The New Republic on December 1, 2020
Forest on fire with two firefighters spraying water

A Note from the Fireline

Climate change and the colonial legacy of fire suppression.
by Jordan Thomas via The Drift on October 21, 2020

Milk Country

The making of Vermont's landscape.
by Janice Kai Chen via janicekchen.com on May 9, 2020

Tornado Groan: On Black (Blues) Ecologies

How early blues musicians processed the toll taken by tornadoes, floods, and other disasters that displaced them from their communities.
by J. T. Roane via Black Perspectives on March 16, 2020
Ruins of a Victorian dock in the sea with a flock of birds above.

Victorian Efforts to Export Animals to New Worlds Failed, Mostly

Acclimatization societies believed that animals could fill the gaps of a deficient environment.
by Harriet Ritvo via The Conversation on January 23, 2020

The Symbolic Seashell

Collecting seashells is as old as humanity. What we do with them can reveal who we are, where we’re from, and what we believe.
by Krista Langlois via Hakai on October 22, 2019

Inventing the Environment

A review of two new books on the postwar origins of “the Environment.”
by Carolyn Taratko via Los Angeles Review of Books on August 15, 2019

Oral Histories of The 1969 Cuyahoga River Fire

The events of June 1969 have come to define both Cleveland and the river. Some Clevelanders have a different story.
by Rebekkah Rubin via Belt Magazine on June 3, 2019
Firefighters cutting a trench as a blaze approaches.

The Case for Letting Malibu Burn

Many of California’s native ecosystems evolved to burn. But modern fire suppression creates fuel for catastrophic fires. Is it time for a change?
by Mike Davis via Longreads on December 4, 2018

W. E. B. Du Bois and the American Environment

Du Bois's ideas about the environment — and how Jim Crow shaped them — have gone relatively unnoticed by environmental historians.
by Brian McCammack via Edge Effects on September 25, 2018
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