Talk:Environmental history

Deletions
Material on environmentalists/conservationists such as Teddy Roosevelt belongs in entries on environmentalism and conservation, not in entry on environmental history. Pillsbury material not directly relevant to environmental history, so moved to a separate entry. Esbenson 17:58, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

this article is so embarrasing, somebody please save it.

?Saving it
I am responding to the appeal above. Any kind of re-write is likely to offend editors that have worked on the article as it stands no matter what it might seem like to passing readers and for that I apologise and hope that we can find a way through. I have tried to reorganise content for this article and to incorporate whatever I can from the existing material. I would appreciate any assistance from interested editors although would prefer comments and suggestions to be made here. I will allow a fortnight for comment (unless this is considered too short by other editors) before uploading the new version. There is still a lot of work to be done but you can see the drift of what is being prepared here. Please comment. At the moment I propose working on the new article for about another fortnight nd then putting it up in real time - about 24th Feb. Let me know if this is not OK.  Granitethighs  09:03, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

?Saved
I have put up the new version. I hope editors think it is more informative, encyclopaedic, entertaining and well cited. I will continue to edit it as there is some repetition and tweaking still to be done.  Granitethighs  10:47, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Style and conciseness
This article has a lot of good information, but some problems are evident. The definition/introduction is too long, and sounds way too much like an undergraduate or graduate paper. For example,

''As all human experience is grounded in the natural world almost anything might be considered suitable material for research, a situation that acts as an incentive to ground the subject in particular time-scales, geographic regions, or key themes ''

is verbose, includes specifically academic jargon not in popular usage ("to ground"), and is closer in function to developing a thesis than presenting information. Also, many of the lists are excessive and impede clear understanding for a first-time reader:

'' Thirdly, how we think about nature – the way our attitudes, beliefs and values influence our interaction with nature, that is, the influence of myths, legends, ideology, aesthetics, religion and science. ''

The structure is redundant, using first a dash and then "that is" before defining the question "how we think about nature". Too many elements are included. For instance, the distinction between myth and legend could be important in the body of the article, but it is superfluous here.

Other problem sentences include:

''Environmental history is history written with the acknowledgment that we shape our environment and it shapes us. '' use of the first person

Certainly as a strongly multidisciplinary subject it draws widely on both the humanities and natural science and, like all history, it presents us with a considered view of the past from which we have the opportunity to learn. rhetorical use of "certainly", "like all history...to learn" is pompous and adds nothing

''Certainly in simple terms it is a history that tries to explain why our environment is like it is and how humanity has influenced its current configuration, as well as elucidating the problems and opportunities of tomorrow. '' again "certainly", "in simple terms" is neither encyclopedic nor accurate in this context

I could go on, but I hope the issues are clear. Given the uniform style and high quality of information it seems best if the original author, or at least someone well-versed in the field, were to fix the writing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.170.15 (talk) 23:25, 28 May 2011 (UTC)


 * These comments from an IP are both pertinent and useful. And, yes, I am responsible for most of the content here. It should be possible with some re-organisation of content and good copyediting to raise this article to GA status. As the IP comments do not concern the factual content of the article, more the editing, then I suggest the IP do the necessary editing. I am sure the article would benefit greatly. I could then make changes to the structure and the article could be submitted for GA. It would also be helpful if the IP could take up a real identity on Wikipedia.  Granitethighs  00:03, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Malthus?
I have been working a bit on article related to malthusianism and wonder if there is somewhere for this type of discussion in this article? As the article is apparently quite complete and structured already I would ask for advice on where information on such a debate could go. I am not formally familiar with environmental history, so am not sure. It seems to be an appropriate topic to at least mention on this page, ie debates between malthusians/neo-malthusians and conucopians, etc.... We could also include a discussion of peak oil and other related debates. Peregrine981 (talk) 13:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Random reader feedback
I like the article a lot. One point of feedback comes to mind. In the opening sentence the reference to historiography put me off a bit. Is environmental history necessarily historiography rather than just history? Does this really need to be mentioned in the opening sentence? I find it confusing.Chogg (talk) 19:48, 14 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks - have edited lead.  Granitethighs  02:53, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

"Columbus and the pilgrim fathers" ? ?
Text under the fifth image right. Is that a joke? After all, every schoolboy knows Catholic Cristòforo = Cristóbal COLOMBO from Genova who "discovered" America Oct. 12th, 1492, has nothing to do with the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers who founded Boston in 1620.

Nuremberg/Bavaria -   Ángel.García2001 ~ ~ ~ ~  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.188.3.21 (talk) 15:14, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

"Columbus and the pilgrim fathers" ? ?
Text under the fifth image right. Is that a joke? After all, every schoolboy knows Catholic Cristòforo = Cristóbal COLOMBO from Genova who "discovered" America Oct. 12th, 1492, has nothing to do with the Puritan Pilgrim Fathers who founded Boston in 1620.

Nuremberg/ Bavaria -  Ángel.García2001  ~ ~ ~ ~  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.188.3.21 (talk) 15:16, 12 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Please edit caption.  Granitethighs  22:53, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Bibliography of environmental history?
So much of this article in its current form is in the form of lists of bibliographical references that I think it may be timely and useful to spin off a new, Bibliography of environmental history article, allowing this one to focus more squarely on the synthetic substance of the field. Thoughts? Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 12:39, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * the bibliography is at the end where it will not distract anyone from reading the text--but where it will help students find materials to use for writing papers. Removing it will not add or improve one paragraph of text, but will give less info to readers. Rjensen (talk) 18:09, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, Rjensen. Actually, the bibliographical aspects of the article start much earlier, in the Methodology section. It's just my opinion, but altogether, this seems to rather dominate the latter part of the article, detracting from it overall. Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 18:19, 7 April 2013 (UTC)
 * I think the bibliography is great, but I really question the need to have TWO largely overlapping bibliographies (one labeled "bibliography" and the other labeled "seminal works" or something like that). Personally, if I had the time and if this were my field, I would incorporate the first bib into the second and just have one comprehensive bibliography. Might also be worth pointing out that this is, from what I see, an English-language bib. There are more works, obviously, in other languages. --Potosino (talk) 23:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

German authors
The article lacks some of the German (and French) specific contributions, some of them as Joachim Radkau have been translated (as Nature and Power) and gained some fame as groundbreaking studies in the field (Bentley Book Prize 2009). Middle Europe and the alpine region have as well a quite diversified tradition on land use and commons, which is not being mirrored in english sources only and they are base of the earliest and politically strongest green movement and ecology studies - including some brown spots in the third reich. Serten (talk) 08:05, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Bibliography for Australasia
There are 2 overlapping lists that need to be merged-any doers? DadaNeem (talk) 05:01, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Environmental history. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.historyforthefuture.org/wordpress/?p=46
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090703095241/http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/96.1/turner.html to http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/96.1/turner.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 19:11, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Environmental history. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100613160817/http://envirohistorynz.wordpress.com/podcasts-2/ to http://envirohistorynz.wordpress.com/podcasts-2/

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 21:34, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

US perspective of the article
The article talks pretty much about environmental history from the US perspective, making claims such as "Environmental history emerged in the United States out of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and much of its impetus still stems from present-day global environmental concerns.", which is not true (several historians in Latin America have talked about the issue back in the '70s to, so saying that the field emerged in the US is a bold claim). The sources being cited for "Environmental history in different parts of the world" (Africa, Asia, etc.), are mainly US/English speaking scholars, which is like saying that there's no-one in these regions that has produced scholarship on the subject (again, not true). The article does not reflect world perspectives on the subject. Scann (talk) 16:31, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * For example, sources that could be added to reflect other parts of the world: Joan Martínez Alier (very well known in the Spanish speaking world), Antonio Brailovsky (one of the first ones in Latin America, with some of his works dating back to the early '70s), Stefania Gallini, etc. --Scann (talk) 16:44, 24 December 2020 (UTC)
 * not helpful to cite people unknown to Wikipedia--they first need their own articles. Rjensen (talk) 03:10, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
 * that is a surprising reply, since when one cant use sources or authors not yet having their page in wp? EH research outside USA is nowadays widely established and the page may benefit from extending its coverage of that. I find the reading lists quite a weak filler for a yet incomplete encyclopedic entry. Tytire (talk) 18:12, 25 December 2023 (UTC)