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Environmental history

Essays and videos on social issues, history, political life and the future

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Aerial photo of a large circular crater with a dark centre in a brown landscape, resembling an impact site.

videoEnvironmental history

In Kazakhstan, ‘atomic lakes’ still scar the landscape decades after Soviet nuclear tests

13 minutes

Photo of a giraffe seen through an arched doorway with brick and blue tiled walls in a zoo environment.

videoAnimals and humans

Are zoos and natural history museums born of a desire to understand, or to control?

57 minutes

Five differently coloured triangular wax crayon bars standing upright on a white surface.

videoArt

Watch as Japan’s surplus trees are transformed into forest-tinted crayons

4 minutes

A black-and-white photo of a group of men sitting close together, some with mouths open as if singing or speaking. In the blurry background, additional people are seated around a table. The scene appears to be inside a room with a warm, communal atmosphere.

essayMusic

Folk music was never green

Don’t be swayed by the sound of environmental protest: these songs were first sung in the voice of the cutter, not the tree

Richard Smyth

Illustrated circle with colourful, abstract plant shapes and roots on a dark blue background.

videoDeep time

When algae met fungi – the hidden story of life’s most successful partnership

4 minutes

Massive explosion with bright orange and yellow flames in the sky, seen from a distance on a country road with trees and fields nearby.

essayGlobal history

The polycrisis

Is this the word we need to describe unprecedented convergences between ecological, political and economic strife?

Ville Lähde

Traditional Chinese landscape painting depicting misty mountains, trees, and a river with boats, accompanied by Chinese calligraphy in the upper right corner.

essayEnvironmental history

Masts like a forest

How the trees of China – fir, camphor, ironwood and nanmu – were used to build an empire that lasted for centuries

Ian M Miller

A misty, moss-covered forest with twisted trees and dense undergrowth, creating a mysterious, green and lush atmosphere.

videoEcology and environmental sciences

In an ancient English rainforest, John creates charcoal and cultivates growth

12 minutes

A dramatic black-and-white landscape of a vast lake, surrounded by mountains, under a large, turbulent sky filled with clouds.

essayAnthropology

Memories within myth

The stories of oral societies, passed from generation to generation, are more than they seem. They are scientific records

Patrick Nunn

Person with a notepad and pencil wearing a red hat, standing in a dense forest with fallen trees and foliage.

essayEnvironmental history

Disturbance

How atomic doomsday experiments, fuelled by Cold War fears, shaped then shook ecologists’ faith in self-healing nature

Laura J Martin

Man carrying a bundle of sticks on his shoulder, walking across a plank over a ditch in a barren, harvested field; another person carrying sticks in the background.

essayGlobal history

Ever more land and labour

Centuries of capitalism saw the global countryside ruthlessly converted into cheap commodities. But at what cost?

Sven Beckert & Ulbe Bosma

Two people operating a tractor in a flooded rice field with houses and a snow-capped mountain in the background.

essayEnvironmental history

Dancing with water

As storms, droughts and floods become more intense, what can the world learn from Japan’s profoundly wet history?

Giulio Boccaletti

A ship emitting smoke sails between large icebergs under a gloomy, overcast sky.

essayEarth science and climate

The Antarctic paradox

The most protected place on Earth has become one of the most threatened – and threatening. Can its problems be solved?

Alejandra Mancilla & Peder Roberts

Illustration of a large, checkered dome with people working inside and on the perimeter, featuring a map overlay and a detailed cityscape in the background.

essayEarth science and climate

A new Earth rises

How did the planet replace the nation-state to become the prime political object of the 21st century?

Erik Isberg

Illustration of a person on a toilet, holding a spade, sitting atop a mound of vegetables with a tractor in the background.

essayThe environment

The power of shit

Our excrement is a natural, renewable and sustainable resource – if only we can overcome our visceral disgust of it

Lina Zeldovich

Vintage photo of an industrial mining site with smelter chimneys, horse-drawn carts, wooden buildings, and piles of materials.

essayEnvironmental history

Contaminated kinship

If your hometown were beset with toxic dust, like Australia’s Broken Hill, would you feel any less connected to it?

Lilian Pearce

Two boys navigating a large cart filled with debris through a vast rubbish dump, with buildings and goats in the background.

essayDesign and fashion

The Waste Age

Recognising that waste is central, not peripheral, to everything we design, make and do is key to transforming the future

Justin McGuirk

A group of people sitting or standing under a large tree in a dry, hilly landscape with shrubs and distant mountains.

essayThe environment

The miracle of the commons

Far from being profoundly destructive, we humans have deep capacities for sharing resources with generosity and foresight

Michelle Nijhuis

Medieval manuscript illustration of a person defecating outdoors near a pig with musical notation and scribbles in the background.

essayEnvironmental history

Human crap

We are demigods of discards – but our copious garbage became a toxic burden only with the modern cult of ‘disposability’

Gabrielle Hecht

Vintage photograph of two double-decker buses in a foggy city scene with pedestrians and traffic lights in the foreground.

essayThe environment

Slow hope

Climate change is an emergency but despair is not the answer. The world is full of untold stories of people-powered change

Christof Mauch

A firefighter combatting a raging forest fire at night with flames and smoke illuminating the scene around them.

essayDeep time

The planet is burning

Wild, feral and fossil-fuelled, fire lights up the globe. Is it time to declare that humans have created a Pyrocene?

Stephen J Pyne

A historic painting depicting a bustling winter scene with people engaging in various activities on a frozen river near a village.

essayEnvironmental history

Little Ice Age lessons

The world’s last climate crisis demonstrates that surviving is possible if bold economic and social change is embraced

Dagomar Degroot

A line of people in a snowy landscape pulling a whale out of the water in unison at dusk, with scattered rocks and a structure in the background.

essayAnimals and humans

Turn and live with animals

The slaughterhouse ethic of Soviet and American whalers tells us we must look beyond communism and capitalism to survive

Bathsheba Demuth

A flock of small brown and white birds resting on smooth grey pebbles, huddled closely together and facing different directions.

ideaNature and landscape

For Rachel Carson, wonder was a radical state of mind

Jennifer Stitt