I am sitting on the shores of the Great Salt Lake near Salt Lake City, Utah. The scorching sun beats down on my back, and I am the only one who has braved the 20-minute […]
A Platform on Representation, Engagement, and Community for Environmental History and Environmental Humanities
Tag: climate change
Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of U.S. Environmental Law: A Review
In Lessons for a Warming Planet: A Vital History of US Environmental Law, authors Alejandro E. Camacho and Brigham Daniels probe environmental legal history to understand the law’s troubled relationship to environmental degradation and protection, while uncovering the legal change that is needed to address the most pressing environmental challenges of our era, such as climate change.
Rethinking Incomplete Metaphors for the Earth System
We often hear about the Anthropocene, but what if it’s not the only way to understand our impact on Earth? Ideas like the noosphere and technosphere offer striking new ways to see humanity’s role on Earth.
Strange Assemblages: The Environmental Uncanny and the British Wildlife Park
The zoo, a space that once spoke to human domination over nature, now proves a morally loaded stage on which the biodiversity crisis slips out of our hands.
The case for weighing voles on your vacation
Visualize your dream vacation. Maybe you’re stretched out on a towel, listening to waves swell and crash on a sandy shore. Or taking the first bite of a still-warm, flaky croissant on a hotel balcony […]
Smoke and Plastic: Feeling the Environmental Past
The suggestion that Barbie lives in an immaterial world was not lost on environmental icon Smokey Bear who, upon noticing her campsite, tweeted a visual critique.
Nuclear Power in Times of Climate Change and the Water Risks Around It
When I decided to write my PhD thesis on the history of the nuclear Rhine in the summer of 2018, the front pages of the newspapers were dominated by news of the record summer and that several nuclear power plants on the Rhine had to be shut down.
The International Regime on Climate Change: On Differentiated Responsibilities and Respective Capabilities
To understand the politics of climate change and international efforts to address the issue, there is a concept of paramount importance: the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDRRC).
History, Planetary Health, and the Superpower of Long-Term Thinking
A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Universitas 21 Workshop on Planetary Health, a gathering of researchers of different backgrounds from twenty-one universities around the world – from Chile to Australia – who came together to discuss how to operationalize their concern for and interest in the growing non-discipline of Planetary Health.
Galvanizing Glaciology: Thoughts on an Ecocritical Art History
Glaciers are marked by the contours of time. Flow lines and lateral moraines (ridges of accumulated dirt and rocks) demarcate the movement of ice with traces of debris incised into the glacier’s icy surface. Tributaries, rivers, and floods unfurl the flow of the ice into meltwater. As many of the world’s glaciers continue to thaw and no longer reproduce, they have been classed as an endangered species.