THE ENVIRONMENT

An in depth look at the history of the environment Is it possible for the economy to grow without the environment being destroyed Will our lifestyles impoverish the planet for our children and grandchildren Is the world sick Can it be healed Less than a lifetime ago these questions would have made no sense This was not because our ancestors had no impact on nature nor because they were unaware of the serious damage they had done What people lacked was an idea a way of imagining the web of interconnection and consequence of which the natural world is made Without this notion we didn t have a way to describe the scale and scope of human impact upon nature This idea was the environment In this fascinating book Paul Warde Libby Robin and Sverker Sörlin trace the emergence of the concept of the environment following World War II a period characterized by both hope for a new global order and fear of humans capacity for almost limitless destruction It was at this moment that a new idea and a new narrative about the planet wide impact of people s behavior emerged closely allied to anxieties for the future Now we had a vocabulary for talking about how we were changing nature resource exhaustion and energy biodiversity pollution and eventually climate