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"The English word "environment" dates to the mid-nineteenth century, and the concept that it was invented to describe is not much older. Only since the late eighteenth century, and only in certain contexts, has it become common to believe that life can best be explained in environmental terms. Surroundings is the first full history of the concept - one that shows how it became compelling to particular communities of people. Today we confront the legacies of this long history, which the author argues has made it difficult to speak coherently and persuasively about questions of environmental justice and equity. The history recounted in Surrounded can help us better understand why we find ourselves in this predicament and what we might do about it. For it uncovers not only the diversity of forms that environmentalism has taken in the past but how paying attention them can open our eyes to the promising new varieties of environmentalism that are emerging today"--

"Dar es Salaam, the largest city in Tanzania and the largest populated city in eastern Africa, was a changing urban landscape in the 1970s and 1980s. Gripped by an unfolding economic crisis and the fracturing of urban infrastructures, the citizens of Dar increasingly made their lives in transit between the city and its periphery, in order to find food, housing, and transportation. In doing so, they were turning to the ground to make life possible when they were either short on cash or other urban shortages broadly persisted. They exploited the coastal region's natural resources to shape their lives, relying on the city's outskirts to plant small shambas or to seek out building materials for their houses, goods to sell at markets, or charcoal for cooking the evening meal. Gone to Ground explores the ways in which the residents of Dar worked around or made do with what they could find, acquire, and grow in order to survive"--

This book is the first volume of a monograph series published by the Socio-Economic History Society, Japan. The purpose of the series is to make works by Japanese scholars accessible to a wider readership and to increase the knowledge of scholars in this field, particularly in relation to Asia. This volume includes four chapters on energy and the environment of Japan, China, and Britain, and four short book reviews on recent academic works published in Japanese and English. The four chapters cover the following topics: the relationship between deforestation and the development of the silk reeling industry in a district of Nagano Prefecture (central Japan) from the 1870s to the 1900s and the subsequent shift from firewood to coal; the importance of timber supplies for the development of industry as illustrated by a case study on the supply of timber for use as rail sleepers in the Japanese national railway network during the prewar period; a methodological survey of the history of ecology and the environment in China; and an analysis of the British Smoke Nuisance Abatement Act of 1821 as a measure that incorporated the interests of politicians, landlords, and industrialists.

This book is the first volume of a monograph series published by the Socio-Economic History Society, Japan. The purpose of the series is to make works by Japanese scholars accessible to a wider readership and to increase the knowledge of scholars in this field, particularly in relation to Asia. This volume includes four chapters on energy and the environment of Japan, China and Britain and four short book reviews on recent academic works published in Japanese and English. The four chapters cover the following topics: the relationship between deforestation and the development of the silk reelin

"Now in its second edition and refreshed by a decade of new research, The Environment in World History uncovers the deep-rooted causes of interconnected climate, biodiversity, and ecological crises that have brought the environment to the top of the global political agenda in the twenty-first century. Its expanded chapters and case studies explore a wide range of issues including: the hunting of wildlife and the loss of biodiversity across the globe; deforestation and the development of strategies to protect the world's forests; soil degradation caused by worldwide agricultural expansion, one of the most profound ways that humans have altered the planet; the widening impact of urban-industrial growth and the deepening ecological footprints of the world's cities; and the rising levels of air, land and water pollution as the trade-off for continued economic growth worldwide. Covering the last five hundred years, it offers an essential environmental perspective on well-known world history narratives of imperialism and colonialism, trade and commerce, technological progress, and the advance of civilisation. Clearly written and fully up-to-date, it is an invaluable resource for all students of world history and environmental studies"--

Since around 1500 C.E., humans have shaped the global environment in ways that were previously unimaginable. Bringing together leading environmental historians and world historians, this book offers an overview of global environmental history throughout this remarkable 500-year period. In eleven essays, the contributors examine the connections between environmental change and other major topics of early modern and modern world history: population growth, commercialization, imperialism, industrialization, the fossil fuel revolution, and more. Rather than attributing environmental change largely to European science, technology, and capitalism, the essays illuminate a series of culturally distinctive, yet often parallel developments arising in many parts of the world, leading to intensified exploitation of land and water

1. Pre-American ecology : environmental alteration is addressed (1100-1854) -- 2. Colonial environmentalism : the first land use & timber regulations (1681) -- 3. Transcending society : the sacrament of wilderness (1862) -- 4. The national park system : preserving wilderness for public use (1865) -- 5. Animals and the environment : creation of the ASPCA (1866) -- 6. The timber barons : profit vs. sustainability (1889) -- 7. The conservationists : save what is left of the forests (1901) -- 8. Naturalist in the capital, Theodore Roosevelt : American wilderness as America's cultural heritage (1908) -- 9. The park service : reforming the federal park management system (1908) -- 10. Lobbyists for life : devastating effects form unlikely alliance (1936) -- 11. The whole of the wild : interconnectiveness of nature (1944) -- 12. Change is in the air : the first Air Pollution Control Act (1955) -- 13. Environmental progress : synthetic pesticides and corporate accountability (1962) -- 14. The new danger : the protection of endangered species (1966) -- 15. Smoke on the water : the Environmental Protection Agency (1970) -- 16. The environmental days : the first Earth Day (1970) -- 17. Beyond the government : Greenpeace makes international headlines (1975) -- 18. Pollution solutions : changes in the automobile industry (1970) -- 19. Ozone depletion : success of the Montreal Protocol (1987) -- 20. Climate chaos part I : the first warning is sounded (1847) -- 21. Climate chaos part II : climate-change denial (1980s-2000s) -- 22. Globalizing environmentalism : international conferences (1972-2017) -- 23. Oceans in the balance : the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (1997) -- 24. Urbane ecology : development of green cities (1800s-present) -- 25. Renewing perspectives : harnessing wind, water, and sun (1960s-present) -- 26. Cyclic waste : reduce, reuse, recycle (1970s-present) -- 27. America's black heart : the debate over coal (2017) -- 28. Leaving the environment behind : environmental policies rolled back (2017).

This book provides a comprehensive and comprehensible history of China from prehistory to the present. Focusing on the interaction of humans and their environment, the author traces changes in the physical and cultural world that is home to a quarter of humankind. Through both word and image, this work illuminates the chaos and paradox inherent in China's environmental narrative, demonstrating how historically sustainable practices can, in fact, be profoundly ecologically unsound. The author also reevaluates China's traditional "heroic" storyline, highlighting the marginalization of nature that followed the spread of Chinese civilization while examining the development of a distinctly Chinese way of relating to and altering the environment. And also, he makes the compelling argument that all of humanity has a stake in China's environmental future

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Preface -- Chapter 1 Anthropocentric environmentalism -- Placing (European) humans first -- Scrambles in Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific -- Enter the environmentalists? -- To the 1900 convention -- The 1902 bird convention -- Marine life -- World war -- New hope? -- Chapter 2 From war through war -- Whaling -- Oil pollution -- Fisheries -- The 1933 convention -- Birds in North America -- Transboundary pollution -- A World again at war -- The United Nations -- Chapter 3 Cold war, science, and the environment -- Containment, fisheries, and whaling -- Korea -- Science, nature, and the cold war -- The Great Leap Forward -- The atomic arms race -- From moratorium to test ban -- Victory for the environmentalists? -- Chapter 4 Silent Spring, Stockholm, and the North-South divide -- The new environmentalism -- Vietnam and the environment -- Marine life -- Decolonization and the North-South divide -- LDCs and the environment -- Stockholm -- Stockholm's legacy -- Omens -- Chapter 5 Creating regimes -- Stockholm: A legacy lacking -- The Anglo-American shift -- Marine life -- Acid rain and the climate conundrum -- The ozone quandary -- Chernobyl -- The Persian Gulf War -- Addressing ozone -- Hazardous waste -- To Rio -- The Rio conference -- The resistance to environmental regimes -- Chapter 6 The Anthropocene epoch? -- Addressing the Rio Agenda -- NAFTA -- Marine life -- Hazardous waste -- The ozone layer and climate change -- Johannesburg -- The challenges persist -- The climate conundrum continues -- Paris -- Nuclear power and plastics -- In the Anthropocene? -- Conclusion: Accomplishments and challenges -- Accomplishments -- Challenges at sea -- Challenges on land: Poaching, poison, and radiation -- Demographic challenges

Icebergs, at present, are living a second life on screens. While they are one of the natural world's most photogenic objects, icebergs are also subject to modes of representation through parametric modeling applications. The purpose of this digital life on screens is largely confined to determining how, and under what conditions, icebergs can be made a source of potable water for the planet. Yet icebergs have a story to tell about the epistemological and economic production of northern natural resources. Distinct institutional actors, from oceanographers and military engineers to Saudi royalty and software design companies, have sought to control and come to know icebergs through specific practices of modeling. I argue that the representation of icebergs is a contingent practice that has often been bound up with processes of commodification. To come to know icebergs we have to come to know how these quintessentially polar phenomena have been represented and commodified, across the twentieth century and at a significant remove from the highest latitudes of the planet. The increasing pace of northern development, with natural resources at the vanguard of corporate and governmental incursions, signals the emergence of "media environments" that are extending the representation of (and control over) natural phenomena through a series of media technologies, from 3D modeling applications and collections of satellite data to virtual reality environments and predictive algorithms.

"Nature and technology have become critical issues, both empirically and theoretically, within the history of technology and related fields. This book comes at an important moment in the specialty's history: scholarly dialogue has been ongoing for more than a generation, with work under an explicit "envirotech" framework now entering its second decade. The goal of this book is to synthesize some of the critical topics and contributions in envirotech scholarship"--