Science, Technology, and Conservation, 1800–2000

ASU HST 200 (Historical Themes) Science, Technology, and Conservation, 1800-2000 The study of environmental history is somewhat young, having gained popularity in America in the 1970s. The discipline of history had an entirely simpler work in the past since politics was the only significant subject and the nation-state was the only available area. But as the globe shifted toward a more global perspective, history as "past politics" started to lose ground. This is where the environmental historians emerged as a new wave of reformers, demanding that we delve even further-that is, to the earth itself as a historical agency and presence. However, it may also create additional barriers to research that does not cleanly fit within the bounds of nature. One example of this is environmental history, which includes the enormous whales that hunt throughout the world's seas. All things considered, environment history is a part of a revisionist movement to broaden the discipline's narratives beyond what they have been historically. It challenges the widely held belief that human experience has been free from natural limitations and that because humans are a unique species with supernatural abilities, the environmental effects of their previous actions may be disregarded. Because it examines how humans have impacted the environment, or rather, how human cultures have interacted with the rest of nature, environment history is inherently anthropogenic. Hoozonet uses the J-curve to support his claim that after 1500, new technological advancements caused a rapid change in the environment. He contends that this marked a significant turning point in environmental history, coinciding with Christopher Columbus's discovery of America. According to Hoozonet, the only thing needed to turn this curve back to normal is fresh technical advancement. As a result of the growth of science and technology, we witness the emergence of new environmental issues. As a result, environmental history was initially motivated by moral principles and a strong political commitment, but as it developed, it also evolved into a scholarly endeavor without a clear-cut moral or political agenda. Expanding our knowledge of how people have impacted and been impacted by their natural surroundings over time, as well as how they have impacted and been impacted by that environment, became its main objective. The United States has been one of the most vibrant hubs of this new history. Roderick Nash's essay "The State of Environment History" was the first attempt to define the field; Nash suggested viewing the entire environment as a type of historical record on which Americans have been writing about themselves and their ideas. France was another hub of invention, and its historians were connected to the Annales periodical. Mark Block and Luciean Febvre founded the journal. Bloch learned about the environmental aspects of society from his studies of French peasant life, while Febure was trained as a social geographer. The Annalistes in France, like American frontier historians, found renewed interest in the environment during the 1960s and early 1970s thanks to the popular movement. The Annal eSchool first focused solely on the ecological environment, but as time went on, it began to explore historical concepts and various production methods that shaped how people interacted with their surroundings. One such example is its research on the Dust Bowl of America in 1930. Donald Worster thought that the discovery of America marked a turning point in the history of this topic by bringing about a shift in the environment. The trade of new plants, animals, and bacteria brought about by people crossing the Pacific in quest of land and other resources opened a new chapter in environmental history, which Alfred Crosby refers to as ecological imperialism. The population explosion of the 16th century was another development that prompted environmental historians to investigate the relationship between population growth and resource exploitation. This led to further technological advancements that resulted in new areas under cultivation and new forms of cultural interaction. Following the 18th century, the industrial revolution occurred, which had a significant influence on the resources of the newly discovered territory due to resource extraction and subsequent environmental changes. The majority of images and maps from this era show people's mindsets as a ruler standing on a globe with two aspects: 1. The planet belongs to us, and we have the right to rule it and pursue our aspirations for progress. 2. The concept that humans live on a planet with finite resources, whose exploitation will eventually cause disaster, was not widely held. Even when it was, it was not very well-known since the majority of the right-wing intellectuals of the eighteenth century, who discussed the historical and geographical effects of human activity, were silent on the subject. Buffon was the first to discuss these shifts, stating that there have been seven significant revolutions in human history that have resulted in admirable modifications in this discourse. The first was the environmental manipulation caused by the excess labor and agricultural output. According to Buffon, Europe was the one that changed the pattern of the land because Europeans were born with the tendency to exploit resources. They were constantly searching for new resources nearby, and once this mission was accomplished, they exploited the resources for their own use and comfort, such as clearing forests and stifling rivers to make the new world suitable for their needs. This led to environmental issues later on. During a thorough field investigation conducted in 1800, Humboldt visited Lake Venezia/Arcata. Based on his data, he saw that the water level was dropping, and he concluded that the main reason for this was widespread deforestation by Spanish settlers in order to establish indigo plantations. Subsequently, the same research was conducted by the French scholar Boussingault using the data provided by Humboldt. Boussingault reversed the direction of Humboldt's study by claiming that the water level in Lake Arcata was rising. He claims that Humboldt was correct when he noted that Venizia was free of Spanish rule after the 1800s, which allowed the slaves employed on the indigo plantations to be set free. resulting in the regrowth of woods and a rise in the lake's water level after there had previously been a drop. Boussingault's use of records from the same lake allowed him to demonstrate that Humboldt's observation-which attributed the environmental problem to the spread of human agriculture-was, in fact, accurate. Polymath scholar and diplomat George Perkins Marsh charged in his 1864 book Man and Nature that the abuse of the environment by the ancient Mediterranean civilizations was the reason for their own downfall, challenging the conventional wisdom that human impact on nature is generally benign or insignificant. They had damaged the natural fertility supporting their well- being by eroding their soils and clearing their slopes of forest. Marsh also makes the connection between soil erosion and deforestation, explaining how the former lowers river levels by washing away soils into large rivers and forming large deposits on the riverbed, which in turn results in less water Howing through the river than usual. Marsh sternly warned his fellow countrymen in the United States that if it didn't stop its own disastrous squandering of natural resources, the new American republic may wind up repeating the mistakes of antiquity. Marsh's dire predictions spurred change and conservation. Man and Nature, which was published just five years before Darwin's On the Origin of Species, was the most significant work of its day in terms of connecting science and history and culture. American geographer Reclus tells us about the numerous ways that humans have affected the same problem in 1871 as he attempts to grasp the overall growth of water level and the reduction of water flow in rivers and tiny streams. Ernst Friedrich, a German geographer, also used different land-exploitation techniques to aid in the migration of European settlers. Petermann first used the word "raubwirtschaft," or "robber economy," in his Mitteilinge in 1904. An economy of this kind goes through three stages: extensive and extended exploitation, poverty that makes people realize they need to save resources, and finally, wealth. He claimed that this series of events resulted in the application of soil fertilizers across Europe, and we watch the same process occurring in the new territories, the full effect of which may be seen throughout old Europe. This robber economy was a byproduct of colonialism and would be replaced by a more sensible one under European control. He might be regarded as the pioneer of the conservation movement as he was the first to raise awareness of the issue of pollution, which has become increasingly pressing in industrialized nations like America and Western Europe. Numerous books, stories, and poetry evoked the need for the open air and a verdant, rural setting, leading to the formation of environmental conservation associations. American geographer Harlan H. Barrows is most recognized for his understanding of geography as human ecology. In his presidential speech to the Association of American Geographers in 1922, he stated this opinion. Barrows believed that merely describing the physical features of the terrain was insufficient. According to him, geography need to emphasize the decisions and adaptations individuals make in order to survive in their surroundings. Put another way, Barrows believed it was more vital to concentrate on what individuals do to live and prosper in their surroundings than it was to investigate how their surroundings affect them. Many people in Barrows's day thought that the environment had a near total impact on societies. This idea-known as environmental determinism-holds that human behavior is determined by the surroundings. Probably the most important cultural geographer of the 20th century was Carl Sauer. Focusing on the material landscape while maintaining a deep interest in human ecology and the negative effects of humans on the environment are characteristics of Sauer's work. Equally important, Sauer dedicated his life's work to tracking the beginnings and spread of cultural activities including fire usage, animal domestication, and agriculture. While there is no denying the significant value of Sauer's contributions to cultural geography, some have criticized him for having an anti-urban, anti-modern slant. Nevertheless, his attempts to address the fundamental problems with "environmental determinism" significantly improved the field of geography in general and cultural geography in particular. The Morphology of Landscape, which Sauer published in 1925, aimed to show that culture is not created by nature; rather, it is created by culture in collaboration with and upon nature. He saw changes made by humans to the environment as an expression of culture. Thus, he contended, a geographer had to learn to read the terrain in order to comprehend a civilization. Both Sauer and Barrow disputed the idea that the environment determines human behavior and that human behavior determines the environment, not the other way around. British imperialist historian John Mackenzie was a trailblazer in the fields of environmental history and popular and cultural imperialism. In his essay about the interwar years, he claims that human energy consumption in the 20th century exceeded that of the previous 10,000 years of human existence. The aftermath of World War One made it more desirable for nations to attempt to seize control of the world's weaker and smaller regions in order to fully use the resources. America was one nation that took such actions. Environmentalist, writer, and marine scientist Rachel Carson made the world aware of the harm that pesticides and fertilizers cause to the environment. A presidential committee that generally validated her conclusions and contributed to the formation of a growing environmental consciousness was established as a result of her best-known book, Silent Spring. Rachel Carson studied how pesticides affected the food chain in the 1950s and published her findings in Silent Spring (1962), her most well-known book. In it, she denounced the careless use of pesticides, particularly DDT (which was eventually outlawed). The book sparked a presidential commission that mainly agreed with her conclusions and contributed to the rise in environmental awareness. The study demonstrated how DDT was overused to overproduce crops and how plantations penetrated the food chain, which had an influence on animals, birds, and people in addition to other species. If environmental concerns are now a topic of discussion in social, political, and economic circles throughout the world, then Barry Commoner—a scientist, educator, best-selling book, public activist, and briefly even a contender for US president-did perhaps more to elevate them to that level than anyone else. The lifetime advocacy of Commoner was centered around three topics. First, there was the threat presented by poisons, insecticides, and other pollutants produced by industrial technology and advancement; none was more dangerous than the radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing that the Soviet Union and the Nevada desert were conducting at the time. In reality, Commoner's investigation of the matter- particularly the work he spearheaded on the dangerous build-up of strontium- 90 in infants' teeth-played a significant role in achieving the 1963 Test Ban Treaty, which outlawed all nuclear testing except for subterranean testing. The second subject was the right of the common person to know about these risks, which are frequently hidden by governments that are seduced by the temporary benefits that come with technology. His third topic sprang from these worries: the necessity of "sustainability," which calls for humankind to live within the bounds of the planet's abundance while adhering to the immutable rules of nature and consuming just as much as an ecosystem is able to restore. Eventually, he would condense his ideas into what he termed "The Four Laws of Ecology." Firstly, he stated that all things are interconnected and that all living things on Earth, including plants, animals, and minerals, are dependent on people. Second, everything needs a home; burning wood or anything else results in smoke and ash rather than merely disappearing. Third, technology aimed at improving nature is likely to harm it as nature knows best. There is no such thing as a free lunch, according to his fourth and final principle. There is always a cost to the environment. Ideas to reject science and technological advancement originated here, and the significant oil crises of the 1970s and 1980s gave rise to this movement. From this point on, we can observe that the writings on the environment were being passed down from one generation to the next, leaving their mark on the heritage of the environment historians who now dominated the field's growth and issues. Prior to delving into the movement of the 20th century, it is imperative that we concentrate on the limits and bounds of environmental history. The study of environmental history is one of the most multidisciplinary academic fields there is. Experts in fields ranging from biology to anthropology find plenty of material for their work. The distinctions between disciplines and genres within disciplines are seldom clear-cut and impenetrable; in the case of environmental history, these distinctions are particularly hazy and permeable. The 20th century movement may be split into two parts: the conservation movement up to the 1960s, and the latter period after 1970, when historians take over (dominated by historians and their work). It is not the study of the environment; rather, it deals with cultural beliefs, gender, economics, myths, etc. A historian differs from a social scientist in that, instead of concentrating solely on one area of study, he studies everything, draws from a variety of disciplines, and attempts to answer "The Why" question at the center of his research. The preservation and conservation of natural areas and resources One of the first vectors for the development of environmental history has been the study of the rational conservation and use of resources on the one hand, and the preservation of natural spaces on the other. The field of US history gave rise to this study initially. The seminal work on "conservationist" policies is Samuel P. Hays's 1959 book Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency. Hays argues that democratic plans connot accomplish conservation policy. Hays explores federal government initiatives in this area at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, especially during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency. John Muir, the first person to discuss the notions of National Parks, is credited with having a greater impact on Roosevelt than others like John Woods and other historians and intellectuals of the 20th century. Muir believed that "none of the natural landscope are ugly so long as they are wild." His viewpoint is one of a political historian who focuses on the elites of academia, government, and administration. This book marks the beginning of fifty years of research on laws, policies, and institutions aimed at protecting and valuing US national resources. The subject of conservation is examined from a perspective influenced by social history and "bottom up" methodologies beginning in the 1970s. John Reiger gave a detailed account of the early and strong involvement of American hunting groups in the preservation of hunting resources in a seminal book. The enormous sandstorms known as the Dust Bowl, which hit the Great Plains in the 1930s, have a unique position in