A History of Environmental Sustainability

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A History of Environmental Sustainability
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Pre-Victorian

• Explore and Hunt

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The Victorian era

• Hunt, collect, explore, classify, shoot, stuff.
• Nature is infinitely abundant, there are less of
  us but we have guns
• Work of Linnaeus
• Darwin evolution versus religious creationism

Victorian African hunting Dog head
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Early Conservation (movement)

• Worlds first National Park in America
• Yellowstone National Park, established by the
  U.S. Congress as a national park on March 1,
  1872, is located primarily in the U.S. state of
  Wyoming, though it also extends into Montana and
  Idaho. The park was the first of its kind, and is
  known for its wildlife and its many geothermal
  features.
• Typically, largely uninhabited areas.

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F.V. Hayden's map of Yellowstone National Park,
1871.
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Pre- and Post-War developments in the UK

• 1930s Northern Ramblers movement
• Kinder Scout mass trespass
• Leads to birth of Britains National Parks
• (double misnomer neither national nor
  parks)
• largely inhabited private countryside (cf. US
  parks)
• 2 main aims conflict with each other
• Conserve
• Increase access for the masses

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60s

• Hippies
• Flower power
• Peace love
• In schools Nature study and Nature tables

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70s

• Environmental education movement grows
• Nature reserves-SSSIs
• Rural studies - Animal husbandry in schools
  etc.
• Awareness grows of scarcity of nature, species
  extinction.
• Due to-
• Urbanisation
• Vehicle traffic increase/pollution
• Second agricultural revolution industrialises the
  countryside (hedgerow removal, excess pesticides,
  farm mechanisation-which started in pre-war days
  when tractors replaced farm horses)

Traffic Jam in Birmingham
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80s

• The Bruntland Report-First green report defined
  sustainability.
• Nature reserves proliferate
• Major TV nature series e.g. Attenboroughs Life
  on Earth
• National Curriculum Council (NCC)
  cross-curricular grey booklets-one of which was
  Environmental Education
• The Geography 16-19 A Level, based on issues of
  people-environment relationships.

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90s

• Alarming signs of poor health of the Earth e.g.
  Hole in the ozone layer, global warming, acid
  rain.
• Land degradation, desertification, whether by
  over-grazing or oil pollution. (Niger delta),
  Siberia, plus oil tanker disasters.
• Sustainable Development enters the (National)
  curriculum greening of school Geography (for
  some!)
• 92- Rio Earth Summit

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Since some decades, according to atmospheric
measurements, ozone layer is getting thinner.
Ozone depletion has been most severe at the
poles, specially over Antarctica, where a
seasonal ozone layer "hole" appears ( in the NASA
image the  blue colour means lack of ozone).
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2000 the Noughties

• World's hottest average years continue.
• Polar ice cap melts alarmingly and Siberian
  tundra perma-frost begins to melt.
• Al Gores film - An Inconvenient Truth
• Human urban-industrial cause of warming accepted
  (except a minority of old men on C4s
  irresponsible programme)
• Kyoto agreement, IPCC (International Panel for
  Climate Change)
• Downward limb of the oil curve - Contraction and
  Convergence model proposed
• End of Suburbia (US), food gardens in Cuba
• Transition Towns movement

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Melting Polar Ice Caps