Handbook

In this course you will gain a global perspective on our modern environmental condition and its development, since the beginnings of civilisation. You will learn about environmental crises affecting societies in the past and how these led to collapse or to adaptation, learning lessons that may be applied to present problems, as well as the origins and flaws of the ideas through which we understand the environment itself.  Specific topics include: the co-evolution of human species and the domesticated plants and animals on whom we depend; religion, economics, and the treatment of the Earth in medieval and early modern Europe; the impacts of population growth and the industrial revolution; imperialism and its ecological and social effects; evolving ideas of nature's limitations and how to cope with them;  ecological science's changing image of nature; and the emergence of contemporary environmentalism.