Vortex (eBook)

An Environmental History of the Modern World

Frank Uekotter (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024
1180 Seiten
University of Pittsburgh Press (Verlag)
9780822989806 (ISBN)

Infos

Environmental challenges are defining the twenty-first century. To fully understand ongoing debates about our current crisesclimate change, loss of biological diversity, pollution, extinction, resource woesmeans revisiting their origins, in all their complexity. With this ambitious, highly original contribution to the environmental history of global modernity, Frank Uektter considers the many ways humans have had an impact on their physical environment throughout history. Ours is not a one-way trajectory to sudden collapse, he argues, but rather death by a thousand cuts. The many paths weve forged to arrive in our current predicament, from agriculture to industry to infrastructure, must be considered collectively if we are to stay afloat in what Uektter describes as a vortex: a powerful metaphor for the flow of history, capturing the momentum and the many crosscurrents that swept people and environments along. His book invites us to look at environmental challenges from multiple perspectives, including all the twists and turns that have helped to create the mess we find ourselves in. Uektter has written a world history for an age where things are falling apart: where we know what lies ahead and are equipped with the right toolstechnological and otherwiseand plenty of experience to deal with environmental challenges, but somehow fail to get our affairs in order.

Autor

Frank Uekötter is professor of environmental humanities at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of more than a dozen books on a broad range of environmental, political, and socioeconomic issues. Since October 2021, he is principal investigator of the global history project “The Making of Monoculture” with generous support from a European Research Council Advanced Grant.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 18.4.2024
• Verlagsort: PIttsburgh
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geologie
• Themenwelt: Technik ► Umwelttechnik / Biotechnologie
• Schlagworte: agricultural history • Anthropocene • energy history • Environmental history • Environmental Humanities • Environmentalism • Environmental Studies • Forest history • Global History • History • History of Science • History of technology • Mining History • modern world • University of Pittsburgh Press • World History
• ISBN-13: 9780822989806 / 9780822989806