Environmental History: An Overview

1. Environmental History:An Overview

2. Near extinction of the Bison • 30-60 million bison (American buffalo) grazed the plains, prairies, and woodlands of the North American continent • By 1892 only 85 buffalo remained and given refuge in Yellowstone National Park and protected by a law against killing wild animals in parks • Ranchers oppose restoring herds of bison on public lands of the North American plains

3. Cultural Changes and the Environment • Three major cultural changes • Agricultural Revolution which began 10,000-12,000 years ago • Industrial Revolution which began about 280 years ago • Information and Globalization Revolution which began about 60 years ago

4. Early Hunter-Gatherer Societies • Survived by gathering edible wild plant parts, fishing, hunting, and scavenging meat from animals killed by other predators • Lived in small bands of less than 50 members and were nomadic following the wildlife • Discovered a variety of plants and animals that could be eaten • Knew where to find water, knew how plant availability changed seasonally • Knew animal migration patterns • Had a life span of 30-40 years so population grew slowly

5. Advanced Hunter-Gatherer Societies • Used more advanced tools and fire to covert forests into grasslands • Contributed to extinction of some large animals including the saber-toothed tiger, cave bear, giant sloth, mammoth and giant bison • Altered the distribution of plants and animals as they carried seeds and plants to new places • Along with early hunter-gatherers, they had a limited impact on the environment because • Small population sizes • Low resource use per person • Migration which allowed nature to replenish itself • Lacked technology that could have expanded impact

6. Agriculture Revolution • Began 10,000-12,00 years ago • People domesticated animals and cultivated wild plants • May have begun in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia, Northeast Africa, and Mexico • Used slash-and-burn cultivation • Also used shifting cultivation • Soil depleted of nutrients they moved to another plot and left patch fallow for about 10-30 years before soil became fertile again • While patches were regenerating, growers used them for tree crops, medicines for fuelwood and thus was sustainable

7. Industrial Revolution • Began in England in the 1700’s when they started running out of wood • Spread to the United States in the 1800’s which lead to rapid expansion in production, trade, and distribution of material goods • Shift from renewable wood which was running out due to unsustainable cutting to nonrenewable fossil fuels with coal being the first and later oil • Led to small-scale production of goods to large-scale machine-made goods • Towns grew to cities with dirty, noisy, hazardous working factory conditions • People worked long hours • Ash and soot covered everything • People started dying of lung diseases • Smog formed as smoke and fog combined to form a blanket around cities with coal burning factories and blotted out the sun for days at a time

8. Fossil-fueled farm machinery, commercial fertilizers, and new plant-breeding techniques increased crop yield • Helped protect biodiversity by reducing the need for cropland to grow food • Farmers migrated to cities where population has grown exponentially and continues today • After WWII, more efficient machines and mass production were developed • became the basis for today’s technologies in the advanced industrialized countries of the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia and western Europe

9. Information and Globalization Revolution • New technologies are enabling people to access more information on a global scale • Has helped us understand more about the earth and other complex systems work • Allows us to respond to environmental problems faster • Gives remote sensing satellites to survey resources • Can reduce pollution and environmental degradation by substituting data for materials and energy and communication for transportation • Allows environmental researchers and activists to exchange data more rapidly

10. The Negative Side of the Information and Globalization Revolution • Provides an overload of information • Causes confusion, distraction, and a sense of helplessness we try to identify useful environmental information and ideas in a rapidly growing sea of information • Increase environmental degradation and decrease of cultural diversity as a globalized economy spreads over most of the earth and homogenizes the world’s cultures • “The greatest threat to humanity is the rapid growth of knowledge. We are creating and introducing new technologies much faster than we can evaluate their impacts.”

11. Environmental History of the United States • The Tribal Era (10,000 years ago to 1607) • The Frontier Era (1607-1890) • The Early Conservation Era (1832-1960) • The Environmental Era (1960-Present)

12. Aldo Leopold and His Land Ethic • Land ethics – philosophy in which humans as part of nature have an ethical responsibility to preserve wild nature • Aldo Leopold, a Yale graduate in Forestry • Was alarmed at the overgrazing and land deterioration on public lands • U.S. was losing many of its untouched wilderness • Convinced the U.S. Forest Service to protect 202,000 hectares of New Mexico’s Gila National Forest which was the first designated wilderness area • Wrote his famous book, The Sand County Almanac which is still read today

13. “Thank God they cannot cut down the clouds.” • Henry David Thoreau