An Inconvenient Truth: The Human History of Climate Change

3 units

Although global warming is unprecedented in its origin and potential consequences for human beings, climate change itself is actually nothing new. For thousands of years, entirely natural influences have altered Earth's climate in ways that shaped human history. The 18th-century advisors to the king of France were warning that deforestation would have an adverse effect on rainfall. The Little Ice Age that began in the 16th century altered settlement patterns, forced new trade networks, and encouraged innovations in agriculture. In this course, we will examine the longer history of climate change and how it has been addressed as a scientific, political, and environmental issue. We will look at such climate phenomena as the discovery of the Green House Effect, El Niño events in the late 19th century, and glacial melting in the 20th century. This course will also introduce students to the field of environmental history and explore how the methods of this field of inquiry challenge traditional historical categories. We will consider the following questions: What happens when time is no longer bound by the written word and is understood in geological terms? How does history play out when the actors driving the action of the story are non-human? How might historians geographically frame their narratives when the subject matter is rarely bound by the political borders of human communities?