Tag Archives: pollution

Environmentalism’s dark, troubled past

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So this time I'm writing from the perspective that this isn't a total charade.
So this time I’m writing from the perspective that this isn’t a total charade.

In last week’s post, in response to the Paris Climate Change Conference, I looked at some of the historic origins for our environmental troubles—basically, why humanity has spent so much of its time not caring about the environment. Before I move onto another topic, I feel I should balance it out with the other side of the coin: If we’ve cared so little for the environment for so long, where do we find the motivation for conferences like Paris—times when our nations’ governments come together and actually think they can do something about the environment? Surely there can’t be that much hot air in the world, or else the greenhouse effect would already be far more progressed.

Many, including CNN apparently, seem to believe the environmental movement began in the 60s. To be fair, if you click on that article, it opens with the story of a river so polluted it literally catches fire. That sticks out in your memory.

Others, such as the illustrious Encyclopaedia Britannica, are willing to trace modern environmentalism back to the Industrial Revolution.1 People who are choking to death under the pollution from the factories they’re working in wanting to clean things up a little? That seems pretty accurate and intuitive to me.

Sorry, what's wrong with living here? Credit: explorePAhistory.com
Sorry, what’s wrong with living here?
Credit: explorePAhistory.com
So instead, I’d like to talk about a much lesser known influence on environmentalism—colonialism.

Now, one of the hallmarks of modern environmentalism—that the state has an important role to play in protecting the environment via regulation and legislation—is literally ancient. Rome, for instance, had laws around the protection of water sources that were so elaborate that apparently we’re still discussing their finer legal ramifications today. Though this seems a little redundant, as they managed to pollute the Tiber River to the point where it was undrinkable. These were relatively piecemeal however, not even conceiving of the environment as a whole, let alone attempting to tackle environmental degradation holistically or systematically.

Richard Grove places large importance on the early colonial experience of tropical islands.2 He talks quite romantically about the experiences of the tropical paradises and the differences between utopias, edens, etc.. I’d explain the difference, but to be honest I skipped over it. His main argument, however, is basically this: as Western powers colonised tropical islands and exploited their resources, they devastated the local environment. Hardly controversial. Grove’s novel insight is that due to a variety of factors, most prominently that said islands were seen as self-contained paradises (or edens, or utopias—I lose track), colonial authorities, particularly those of a scientific bent, were suddenly able to imagine this devastation on a worldwide scale (or a quater-of-the-worldwide scale, in the case of the English). In fact, due to the widespread belief at the time that trees encouraged rainfall, this forms one what seems to be one of the earliest antecedents for modern conceptions of climate change, certainly on a global scale.

I'm not even going to try for a joke.
I’m not even going to try for a joke. Just go to Old Maps Online. Seriously, it’s a really cool website.
In response, according to Grove, the wide-ranging practice of forestry was established. Mauritius is the example he uses, as it’s where the “early environmental debate reached its most comprehensive form” and where local authorities displayed “the kind of rigorous scientific empiricism associated with mid-eighteenth-century French Enlightenment botany” (p. 9). Which is big surprise, as early-eighteenth-century French Enlightenment botany is renowned for its slap-dash scientific empiricism. Nevertheless, credit where credit’s due, local authorities did introduce a level of planning around land use hitherto unseen, with very specific restrictions on how much land could be felled and where.

At a time when a new scientific understanding of the world was expected to sweep-away old superstitious beliefs and usher in an age of Enlightenment, the idea that these great (white, middle-aged, wealthy) men could exert supreme control over their environment and in doing so save the civilised world held an understandably strong appeal (for white, middle-aged, wealthy men). Subsequently, via rather indirect routes, this trend of practising forestry and conservation spread to colonial authorities in India, where one of the largest-scale programs of forest conservation was undertaken. Truly, the amount of area set aside for this was phenomenal. According to Barton, in 1936 the British Empire covered a quarter of the land surface of the world, and a quarter of the Empire was set aside as forest reserves (the word “forest” here is fairly all-encompassing). I question his maths, but he finally offers us the figure of 8% of the world’s land surface being theoretically protected by the British Empire alone.

If you can imagine his hands spreading seeds rather than telephone wires, I think this gives a decent impression—Rhodes' boots stomping down on Africa are certainly accurate.
If you can imagine his hands spreading seeds rather than telephone wires, I think this gives a decent impression—Rhodes’ boots stomping down on Africa are certainly accurate.

In this way, colonialism forms an important, if unacknowledged, precedent for the modern environmental movement in the role it gave the state in creating “scientifically sound” plans around land and environmental use to preserve the environment and avoid catastrophic environmental disasters and even climate change (please do remember we’re talking about 18th century science, so “scientifically sound” is definitely a relative term in this context). Now, if only we could somehow gloss over the way colonial authorities used this somewhat noble ideal for oppression and social control…

Academic Sources
Barton, GA 2002. Empire forestry and the origins of environmentalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Grove, RH 1996. Green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island edens and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Guha, R & Gadgil M 1989. “State forestry and social conflict in British India”, Past & Present, no. 123, pp. 141-177.

Hughes, JD 1997. “Rome’s decline and fall: ecological mistakes?”, Capitalism Nature Socialism, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 121-125.

Wacke, A 2000. “Protection of the environment in Roman law”, Fundamina, vol. 6, no. 6, pp. 1-24.

  1. Jokes aside, that’s actually a really great page for a summary of environmentalism, its many aspect and history. ↩
  2. A note on some of the authors I’m looking at today: Grove and Barton both read as strong apologists for colonialism, and this is coming from someone who’s happy to argue that colonialism=evil is a gross oversimplification. Nevertheless, I think within their works they raise some interesting issues that are well worth addressing. ↩

Why did we even need the Paris Climate Change Conference?

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So apparently the disparate forces of democracy have come together at the Paris Climate Change Conference and saved us all from our own damn smog-filled mess. Or maybe not. But here’s the question: “Why did we even need the conference?” I’m sure you understand the science of what’s going on, but how did we let it come to this? We can’t really ignore the fact that we’re stuck on this planet, so treating it like a tip makes little logical sense. And we can’t claim we didn’t know this was coming, the hypothesis and the science have been around for a long time now.

I was around in 1995, I know what the future holds!

Of course, Paris is just the most recent iteration of a theme that has run alongside the human race forever and a day. It’s obvious that many ancient cultures have had strong relationships with their surroundings. Indigenous Australians are often cited as an example. You always have to be a little wary of such claims (strangely enough, cultures do change over the course of 40,000 years), but they do make a fair point in that early “environmentalism” was extremely spiritual; perhaps not so surprising when you think of the hippie movement. Though perhaps being an environmentalist was easier when you could only have a fairly limited impact on the environment. Although academic debate around the extinction of nearly all the megafauna in Australia does show that you don’t need petrochemicals to ruin your backyard.

Diprotodon—a large extinct marsupial
Apparently we could have had this walking around today. Though I’m not sure that’s a thing we want…
Credit: Dmitry Bogdanov CC3.0.

But if they’re so important, then how did we become so detached from our surroundings? In his book, An Environmental History of the World, Johnson Hughes sets out to show off all the cool things he’s done, from a hot air balloon ride over the Massai Mara National Reserve in Kenya to watching wildlife off the river Napo in Peru. In passing, he also offers a fairly solid history of how humanity has interacted with the environment. Hughes traces our modern attitudes towards the environment back to ancient times, locating the distant origins of our destructive tendencies mostly in two key developments: cities and empires.

The argument behind the first is pretty straight forward. As we began to live in cities, we slowly became divorced from the natural environment which sustained us. People stopped feeling a part of their surroundings and instead felt they needed to impose their will on a hostile environment. This sounds a little “hippie” to my ear, but Hughes does make a fairly convincing argument, particularly in his analysis of the mythologies of ancient Mesopotamia. He notes how culture and civilisation became all that was good and nature and the wild became that which was evil and feared and needing to be controlled.

Lion tearing throat out of a man
THIS. Specifically, this is what they were afraid of.
Credit: CC3.0.
He also describes how this “struggle between nature and culture” (p. 35) was also highly gendered and related to the increasing separation of labour between men and women, because if writing an insightful history of the interaction between humans and their environment is too easy, why not tackle the origins of the modern patriarchy?

Either way, what you’re left with is a view of the environment that is entirely instrumental. It exists to serve people and little more. Not a particularly nice sentiment, but it becomes a real problem when combined with empire. With empire, you’re suddenly organising people on a never before seen scale. So what do you do with all that manpower? If you’re an ancient Sumerian, you attempt to overcome the erratic forces of nature and cut channels for irrigation in excess of 300km in length.

Nature's Round Up.
Nature’s Round Up.
Credit: FreeImages.com/ettina82.
Of course, this plays havoc with the water table and creates salinisation so terrible that parts of ancient Mesopotamia still haven’t recovered. In essence, cities increased our willingness to destroy the local environment, and empires gave us the ability to do it properly (keep in mind I’m using a fairly broad definition of “empire” here, pretty much any large-scale organisation of people will do).

What’s really difficult to understand is that it’s not like the ancients didn’t know what they were doing. Rome’s deforestation was so intense that the subsequent soil erosion moves an entire town miles inland. And because nothing is ever new, the Romans continued to do this in full knowledge of the fact what they were doing was screwing over their own empire. Seriously, you have all the great thinkers of the age complaining about how deforestation was leading to all these problems, including poorer water supplies, soil erosion, silting of rivers and the degradation of farmland… And an (almost) utter failure to do anything about it.

Hmm… All talk on the environment, but no action… Now why does that sound familiar?

...
Ancient Ostia: and you complained when your parents rented a campsite ten minutes from the beach.
Credit: 0x010C CC3.0.

Academic Sources

Hughes, J D 2004 An environmental history of the world: humankind’s changing role in the community of life, 2nd ed., Taylor and Francis, London.

Hughes, J D & Thirgood, J V 1982, “Deforestation, erosion and forest management in Ancient Greece and Rome”, Journal of Forest History, vol. 26, no. 2, pp. 60-75.

Jacobsen, T & Adams, R M 1958, “Salt and silt in ancient Mesopotamian agriculture”, Science, vol. 128, no. 3334, pp. 1251-1258.

Montgomery, D R 2012, Dirt: the erosion of civilisations, 2nd ed., University of California Press, Berkeley.