I often field questions about Environmental History.
“What is Environmental History?” Is the most obvious and common.
A certain knot sets in my gut when I have to answer, not because I am uncertain about my choice of profession, but because I know I am stepping into dangerous territory.
Environmentalism is a polarizing topic. Global warming, climate change, conservation, and many other terms associated with my work are as taboo as religion and politics, precisely because these issues are related. Living and working in the South does not help, where many believe the world is a temporary shell to be destroyed when the savior returns. Why waste energy to save it?
I don’t like confrontation, especially regarding my work.
From my experience, the kind of people who choose to debate the environment do not share my pragmatic approach to our environmental issues. They are looking for an enemy, someone to blame. I am not. I am looking for understanding, which requires me to consider all sides of an argument.
Environmental history shares roots with ecological theories on interconnections. Everything is connected. There are no actions without consequences. My job is to navigate the links. Where there is an issue, such as air pollution, acid rain, and its effect on Smoky Mountain Brook Trout, I look for the cause, human or not. Most issues link to ideas. Acid rain is a byproduct of ideas. History is the lineage of ideas and actions. Environmental history includes the environment as an actor.
Environmental history is a unique field because it has no focal boundaries. We survey all avenues of information to present a more complete view on an issue. The core of our approach is interrelations.
When a sink hole opens up in Florida, swallowing buildings or people, I understand that brittle limestone is the cause. I understand that Florida’s farmers draw from aquifers at alarming rates, honeycomb the fragile foundation to the state’s infrastructure, but according to EPA standards. I know that Florida is an exception, but I also understand that over-extraction of groundwater supplies always affect the environment because they are connected to the streams, marshlands, rivers, and oceans on which we depend.
The world is not a vacuum and our environment will always respond to our actions. The longer, more intense, and narrow focused those actions are, the more intense the consequences.
Anthony Sadler 