Book review: the Story of the world history, perhaps the most important science

”There is protection against almost anything that is

against fire and damage by storm and the cold

yes, count up, what kind as can be.

But there is no protection against the man.”

Harry Martinson, ”Aniara”, song 26

When the poet Harry Martinson in 1956 in ”Aniara” prophetically writing about a soil förödd of the modern man, he is not ahead of its time, but in the middle of it. Just then, in the post-war rusiga state, begins the consciousness of that industrialism has a unheeded back to grow up. The history of the environment is a fascinating story of expertsamhället and the discovery of the endangered future.

That the environment and vädren was something we need to be prepared for, had long been a truth. Martinson's formulation of ”damage by storm and cold,” denotes a deeply rooted conception of the environment against which man must find shelter. But to say that the environment was threatened by the us – ”there is no protection against the man” – it was something new. How miljöbegreppet made the journey from a to denote the general surroundings to be about earth's endangered status and is described in The book ”The Environment – A history of the idea”. It all is an impressive, samförfattat the works of three historians, a swede, Sverker Sörlin, along with Libby Robin from the australian and the briton Paul let there be.

miljöbeskrivningen a often utskåpad textart. In the best cases – as in Harry Martinson – create the literature of its own force, binds together the inner and the outer; in the worst case, the padding, ordrikt fluff to skumläsa. Way -hero, issue, or party, after the word, and you get more specific connotations. The phenomenon that Greta Thunberg, sorting and airport tax.

When the second world war was over, the world had been enriched with a set of world leaders as with the atomic bomb as an emblem uppammade a courage which gave man the tools to wipe out himself. In the same time he started the soup of the civilisationsångest, teknikdrömmar and framtidsskräck that constitute the modern environmental awareness to be cooked together. Of course, people had already before the 1940s, had had ideas about the interplay between man and environment. But ”The Environment” is not a history book about the naturumgänget. Nor is it an anthropology of different societies ways to live with nature. The story is a idéhistorisk, western-anchored display of the modernity in the mid-1900s saw its own waste collection point: the environment. For the trio of historians, it is not so much about who was behind the miljöbegreppet or where it was born, but how the word environment, i.e. the environment in English, came to be a responsibility of some authorities, experts and eventually larger segments of the society.

In the 50's was directed miljötanken of an elite group of predominantly male scientists. Nature, as a concept, therefore, had a burden of nostalgia, a story about loss, and the new age experts got stuck on the environment. The symbolized facts.

febrile period which saw the birth of a global thinking. In 1948 was founded the first environmental organization, the International Union for the Protection of Nature (IUPN). Politics would play little, if no, role. It was up to the experts to solve the problems. At the same time was the environment already from the beginning a battlefield – at the same time the source of prosperity and the object of destruction, and assault.

on the contrary-Robin-let there be highlights four key dimensions in the 1900-century, early environmental awareness: expertise; the future, the numbers and the scales.

Never before had the people received sight on the equally scary what-if scenarios. And it was done with the help of computers that could link local and global scales.

the Emergence of the ecological science was central. That the species interacted in complex relationships realized the british växtfysiologen A R Clapham, who in 1928, coined the term ecosystem, whose implications went on to become big.

”The Environment” points to an interesting duality built into modernity: the same scientific and high-tech development that drove the massive destruction of the environment, also produced the bodies which made possible the knowledge of the rod scale.

miljöexpertisen had ecosystems approach in itself. They constructed models for complex relationships and realized that small changes could cause disasters. What would happen to the planet and communities if the exponential growth continued? The seeds were sown to it as 1972, the report ”limits to Growth”. Published by the club of rome and produced by a group of experts in the field of modeling and complex systems, brought the report immense attention.

the Message was alarming. In a kind of nymalthusianskt the tone of his voice – the economist and clergyman Thomas Malthus had warned the exponential population growth already in 1798 – noted the research team to the earth's resources would their with the path of population growth and material growth. ”Limits to growth”, contained really insufficient data, but what the experts had received the grains on the was dynamics: the relationships between the interacting factors in complex networks. This was the trust to the figures in a whole new way, and on a global scale. When we are in the day, with considerably larger data sets and computers, intuit klimatkataklysmens future, it is the legacy from the 1900-century expert groups we are part of. ”Limits to growth” was controversial. All bought not the message. The british scientist Solly Zuckerman dismissed the report as ”hysterical computerized gloom”.

First, during the 1900s last decades was also the climate of the earth to count as an environmental issue, despite the fact that the science is clear that global warming was a framtidshot already in the 1950s. The backlog had, among other things, to do with who took out the numbers. It was not miljöfolket held on with climate science. But so was formed during the 1980s and 90s, jordsystemvetenskapen, an interconnecting em with the earth's dynamic a whole as the object. Jordsystemvetenskapen, add the name of the memory. It may come to be regarded as history's most important science. And it was out of miljöbegreppet it was born, would on the contrary, Robin, and let there be say.

an awakening. The researchers saw how the planet's basic features, such as climate and nitrogen cycling was severely compromised. And we even live in the awakening. Seen with människohistoriska glasses became sensitivity of the the planet's intricate fabric is not known to a wider public until very recently.

And with geological eyes, is going on the discovery right now.

Or the apocalypse, in the grundbetydelse: disclosure.

To overstate the importance of the modern civilization's insensitivity in the face of the living diversity is hardly possible. Dominansförhållandet civilization of planets is a historic disaster. And so strong turns out the story of the progress be, it amazes that the insects will disappear from the regions, and that the earth kreverar in the industrial capitalist supremacy. The deep miljöinsikten surprising, since the achievement does not allow for real attention.

global shipments demonstrably causing our only home in space serious injury, there is nothing within the current political-economic paradigm that allows for braking. To stop, reflect and change tracks — not even the parties that took into themselves the word environment in their name, feel that this may be a way. When the Swedish government have now ended up in a MP-S-conflict around the airport's planned expansion, with a doubling of air traffic as a result, it sits hard inside for the MP to say it that children make: ”limit you”.

the limits of our Planet – thus the biophysical barriers that already övertrasserats in terms of climate, artutrotning, deforestation, and nitrogen – have, since the pioneering article of jordsystemforskaren Johan Rockstrom in the journal Nature (2009) become clearly defined. However, some limits to economic expansion for the nations of the world in any case – it does not seem to be the talk of the. Than there is no protection against the man.

Read more: Planetlyrikern Jonas Gren