Bill Cronon Environmental History

William Cronon’s work on environmental philosophy The Trouble with Wilderness is most perceptive work ever produced. It has thoughtful impacts for everyone who revolves around the discussion of the environment.

In the first chapter, the author talks about how most people’s attention is on eye-catching images, instead of what is going on in the world. People care more about murders, airplane crashes, etc. instead of the exploding populations or the growth in the amount of nuclear weapons that exist. Because of this, our environment starts to deteriorate. The environment will continue to deteriorate, and such events will be out of control until the human race realizes just how selectively the environment persuades the human mind, and how the biological and cultural history determines our comprehension. The book is about fundamental connections to our past and how the human race can

In a chilling recollection of mankind’s current misdeeds towards the environment in “The End of Nature,” McKibben’s call for action is one paramount to the survival of the human race. In essence, McKibben argues that the futures of both nature and ourselves are delicately yet undeniably interconnected. Furthermore, he urges that “we” (ALL humans) are the deciding chip in said bond. By doing so, McKibben implies that action must be situated if we are to expect any change in such bleak a situation. This argument can clearly be found when McKibben speaks out on a myriad of environmental issues in the past, present, and future. McKibben begins to accustom readers to a pattern in which human ignorance juts out from past environmental experiences.

“ (646) In this paragraph the author engages the reader in thinking about the magnitude of environmental problems in modern day society by creating a parallelism with the Mayan and Polynesian cultures. This is one of the many examples the author uses throughout the text. In this text Diamond introduces a series of factors that have proven to gradually destroy strong kingdoms and cultures throughout history.

As you can clearly see the early Native Americans culture regarding the surrounding ecosystem would probably horrify many ecologists upon first look, but perhaps if we look deeper we can learn a truer meaning to the idea of environmentalism. If we plan to sustain the resources of the earth for our children we must find a balance and end the selfish taking of resources. We can learn much from this

The book “Changes in the Land” by William Cronon in summary is based on environmental history where science, social science, the way society affects human nature and vice-versa is all combined into his narrative. With that being said, he believed that humans are dependent on nature, and nature is something that’s either made or broken by humans. Same goes for vegetation and land area. He wrote about conflicts between two cultures, where when the settlers came in to New England, they took over the Native American’s home. The power the settlers had over the Native Americans grew so strong that it got to a point where the rule of usufruct was put in place, where Native Americans could make use of any natural resource on earth as long as it wasn’t being needed by another person.

One theme of AP World History very relevant here today is the interaction between humans and the environment. Our community relies on agriculture, winemaking to be specific. In fact, our very survival as a community depends on a berry the size of a marble. The economy is very dependent on environmental factors, all of which affect the

Sutter also wrote in his book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Gullies, that “the burden of southern environmental history, then, has been to reintroduce the environment as a casual force while avoiding the determinisms of the past.” In short, Sutter is presenting perhaps the biggest problem within environmental history which is environmental determinism. Environmental determinism meaning the idea that this environment is predisposed to act a certain way regardless and there was no way to avoid it. Sutter avoids this way of thinking in his own book, by explaining that Providence Canyon may not have been created if it were not for human interaction with the soil. Even so, humans are not the only player involved in the canyons creation, one must also account for the poor soil in Georgia to get the full history of how the gully was created.

It will influence the future generations to why we consider environment has been important, create opportunities for generation to come, a culture that can be passed on and sense of appreciation of such an experience (Singer, 2011). This point may not so readily apply to a wider consequentialist approach, which attributes intrinsic value not only to pleasure or satisfaction, but also to various objects and processes in the natural environment (Singer, 2011).

The audience of this this book is presumed to be the general person who is not fully intact with the ideas that he or she is disrupting the ecosystem and is not aware of the effects they are doing as a whole. The book argues that no ecosystem is completely inert as things such as climate changes or drought. Without human interaction an environment can still have issues, but the introduction of human life and economy does take a grave toll on the climate. These are irreversible effects that mankind are making to the ecosystem. The english impact has been such a dramatic change to the climate especially the author compares Theodore 's Diary and Williams Ideas of agriculture. The author even goes on to compare the native ecosystem to the nineteenth century colonization. The natives were much less intrusive on the environments as a whole. The evidence to this was the diaries of the travelers and the natives. He also strengthen his argument by using primary sources and reaching

Nature has value and the only aspect of nature highly valuable to us is nature in its natural, unharmed form. Also, as stated earlier, country and city depend on each other for a majority of things. One cannot exist without the other. This brings to light a major point in Cronon’s work: today’s society essentially depends very highly and reflects off of history and alludes to the above fact that one cannot exist without the other. Natural resources were also beneficial and helped create profit when they were able to be traded among people and

History serves a purpose. By extension, environmental or natural history, some would they are natural history is history, has a purpose. I believe that Paul Sutter articulated it best when he said environmental history should “lend value to the world in which they are entangled, both to narrate the past and to inform action in the present.” How one can accomplish this is a difficult question; William Cronan gives a good mechanism, when he says “environmental history is at least as important for the way it asks and answers questions - by analogy, metaphor, and parable and the search to discover their meanings - than for any specific problems it may actually solve.” In this way, Diana Davis’ Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: Environmental History and French Colonial Expansion in North Africa and David Blackbourn’s The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany best serve to educate about the past and to inform the present. Diana Davis shows her readers that the misappropriation and misuse of knowledge relating to the natural world were used to justify colonization and to declensionist policies, Diana Davis plainly says her purpose: to stop the use of the destructive declensionist narrative, “that postcolonial states have embraced” David Blackbourn on the other hand creates a timeline from the unification of Germany to the Nazis to his present day Germany and he connects multiple narratives to connect conquest of people to The Conquest of Nature,

Ecology as a field of study is the one that we as a species have a massive effect on but we get to see the least overall change in and as such any alterations we make as to the environment can only be based on a look back to history for a guide . The other side of the previous point is that we will never -personally -know what the eventuality of the actions we take as they will not be fully understood fully until we are long gone. The topic that Rachel Carson addresses in her book Silent Spring is the effect that the pesticides are having on the environment and ecosystems upon which they are used. This was an unprecedented look the world that humans inhabit and the lasting effect that we as a species are having. This was so groundbreaking that

Looking at the environment today, one can easily say that the goodness of the environment is deteriorating due to the lack of concern and care. However, many don't realise that most of the environmental problems that we have today such as erosion and forest depletion is actually the after math of environmental disasters that happened years ago. When examining the environmental problems of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the statement “cause and effect”, plays a very significant role in explaining the relationship between humans of that time and the effects that had placed on the environment around them. In many cases, the effects of their cause were very threatening to the environment. By looking back and what the Greeks and Romans had

Nearly everything that a human does is in response to the environment. Our lives are defined by what is around us and what we find in front of us, whether this means accepting, dealing with or changing it. This has been the pattern since primates first stood up and became Homo erectus, and has continued until we considered ourselves doubly wise. The shape of the land affected where humans moved. Weather was something with which to contend. Fire affected humans until they conquered it – and herein lies the core of the relationship. The earth affects humans, and humans affect it back, viewing characteristics and patterns as problems and challenges, and finding a solution.