Thursday, May 14, 2020

FROM THE ARCHIVE

Who politicized the environment and climate change?
February 1, 2016
Protector in chief: Theodore Roosevelt with conservationist John Muir at Yosemite in 1906. U.S. Library of Congress

An environmental activist friend of mine recently shook her head and marveled at the extraordinary accomplishments of the last several months. “Still lots of work to be done,” she said. “But wow! This has been an epic period for environmentalists!”

From the rejection of the Keystone pipeline to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (COP21), “epic” may be an apt descriptor for someone who is an environmentalist.

However, nothing galvanizes opposing forces to action better than significant wins by their foes. And 2016 appears to promise that environmental issues – particularly climate change – will be more politicized than ever before.

It wasn’t always this way.

By and large, environmental action since the 1960s proceeded in the U.S. in a bipartisan fashion, emphasizing issues of human health and resource conservation. That’s no longer true: almost by default, the Democratic Party stands largely alone, rather than together with the Republican Party, to uphold the ethic that environmental protection is a united, American common interest.

How have we gotten to a point where the environment has become such a partisan issue?
From Teddy R. to Reagan

The intellectual roots of American environmentalism are most often traced back to the 19th-century ideas of Romanticism and Transcendentalism from thinkers such as Henry David Thoreau. These philosophical and aesthetic ideas grew into initiatives for preserving the first national parks and monuments, an effort closely associated with Theodore Roosevelt. By the close of the 19th century, a combination of resource exploitation and increasing leisure led to a series of conservation efforts, such as protection of birds from feather hunters, which were often led by wealthy women.

Today’s environmentalism clearly harks back to these origins with aspects of being a social movement that seeks clear political outcomes, including regulation and government action. But much of what became known as the “modern environmental movement” originally coalesced around groups that formed under the influence of 1960s radicalism.The large oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969 provided some of the impetus for landmark environmental laws signed by Nixon, including the Clean Air Act, which he signed December 31, 1970. National Archives

The biggest impact of these organizations, though, came during the later 1960s and 1970s, when their membership skyrocketed with large numbers of the concerned, but not-so-radical, middle class. Through the formation of “nongovernment organizations” (NGOs), ranging widely from the Audubon Society to the Sierra Club, Americans found a mechanism through which they could demand a political response to environmental problems from lawmakers.

During the 1970s and 1980s, NGOs often initiated the call for specific policies and then lobbied members of Congress to create legislation. Such bipartisan action included clean water laws that restored Lake Erie and Ohio’s Cuyahoga River or responded to dramatic events such as the Santa Barbara Oil Spill in 1969.
The nuclear power accident at Three Mile Island in 1979 fueled an antinuclear protest, a major concern of many environmentalists. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)

Republican and Democratic presidents of this era signed laws that had begun with grassroots demands for environmental action. Environmental issues, whether they were the effects of acid rain or the ozone hole, had become a prime concern in the political arena. Indeed, by the 1980s, NGOs had created a new political and legal battlefield as each side of environmental arguments sought to lobby lawmakers.

These gains by environmentalists had a ripple effect politically. In “A Climate of Crisis,” historian Patrick Allitt describes the opposition to environmentalism that emerged as a result of the bipartisan action on environment in the 1970s.

In particular, he describes the “anti-environmental” response manifested in policies of President Ronald Reagan, who slowed efforts to limit private development on public lands and set out to shrink the responsibilities of the federal government.
Antiregulation

Today, portions of this backlash appear to inform the views of candidates in the 2016 Republican presidential primary who reiterate the libertarian belief that it’s best to severely limit government regulation of the environment.

And compared to the cooperative vision of past leaders including President Teddy Roosevelt and Congressman John Saylor, who fought in the 1960s for wilderness and scenic river legislation, the Republican environmental mandate of the past appears today to be stymied.Climate change and environmental issues have barely come up in presidential debates, with candidates typically complaining that environment regulations will harm the economy. Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

Republican presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz, for example, tapped into this spirit when in December 2015 he held a three-hour “hearing” titled “Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate over the Magnitude of Human Impact on Climate Change” (which technically was convened by the science panel of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that he chairs).

Prior to his hearing on the topic, climate change had been little discussed at the party’s presidential debates; however, Cruz proclaimed that the “accepted science” proving climate change was actually a “religion” being forced on the American public by “monied interests.”

By contrast, Democrats stress the term “common sense” and appear more than content to allow their party to become the primary bastion for environmental concern. Hillary Clinton, as the likely Democratic presidential candidate, has often been publicly ahead of the Obama administration on environmental issues.

For instance, when in early 2015 Obama approved the expansion of Arctic drilling, Clinton openly opposed it. Also, Clinton was openly against the Keystone pipeline project long before Obama definitively rejected it.

In both Keystone and Arctic drilling, Obama allowed the issues a long and very public vetting process that has revealed a powerful, broad-based environmental lobby. NGOs such as 350.org and others have demonstrated a willingness for activist demonstrations, particularly due to a deep base of support for issues such as climate change and sustainable energy.

Republican candidates seem prepared to relent possible compromise on environmental questions in order to appeal to a special interest faction of their party. Overall, though, Gallup polling demonstrates broad-based support for environmental issues, including a solid 46 percent favoring protecting the environment over economic development.
Climate change worsens the political divide

Going forward, the most revealing flashpoint on issues related to the environment is likely to be climate change, particularly after the historic Paris Agreement of December 2015.

Global warming first made front page news in the 1980s when NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the Senate. Then in 2007, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) made history by specifying the connection between temperature rise and human activity with “very high confidence.”An emerging political force: activists for action on climate change and sustainable energy. Steve Rhodes/flickr, CC BY-NC-ND

In its relation to environmentalism, climate change represents a clear expansion of thinking. While local issues such as oil spills and toxic waste remain concerns, climate change clarified the possible planet-changing extent of the human impact. As a concept, it has had time to percolate through human culture so that today we are most concerned with issues of “mitigation” and “adaptation” – managing or dealing with implications.

In each case, these responses to climate change involve plans for regulations to, for example, limit carbon emissions. In response to the increasing call for structural changes to our economy and society, contrary voices (such as that of Cruz) have found traction by saying mitigation efforts will undercut economic development and, in general, disrupt our everyday lives.

Not surprisingly, concrete mitigation efforts, such as discussions of “cap and trade” legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and international pacts such as COP21, have also spurred panicked responses among those destined to be impacted by the new thinking. For instance, coal companies and a number of states openly fight efforts by the EPA to monitor and regulate CO2 as a pollutant.

So who politicized the environment? Ultimately, voters have.

By tying environmental issues such as climate change to our system of laws and regulations at the end of the 1960s, Americans permanently chained these concerns to political vagaries in the future. Politics is now an integral part of the process of regulating the nation’s environment and health.

Therefore, a better question might be: “Who exploits the issue of environmental protection for political gain?” That answer, it appears, unfolds today for American voters.

Author
Brian C. Black

Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Pennsylvania State University
Pennsylvania State University provides funding as a founding partner of 

The Conversation
FROM THE ARCHIVE

Exxon’s Rex Tillerson and the rise of Big Oil in American politics

January 10, 2017 



In 1945, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, part of a behind-the-scenes policy to ensure access to oil for the U.S. and its allies. National Archives and Records Administration





“How Big Oil Bought the White House and Tried to Steal the Country” is the subtitle of a book that tells the story of a presidential election in which a candidate allowed money from big oil companies to help him win office and then rewarded them with plum appointments in his cabinet.

With President-elect Donald Trump picking former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, one might think the book is an early exposé of the presidential election of 2016.

Instead, it’s from “The Teapot Dome Scandal,” a book that tells the story of a corruption scandal that rocked the term of President Warren G. Harding’s administration in the 1920s.

In the context of Tillerson’s controversial appointment, history is a useful guide to understand the rising political power of Big Oil over the past century, a subject I’ve studied and written about. And with Tillerson, the political influence of the energy sector has reached a high point, particularly because it strikes the president-elect and other observers as a sensible, mainstream selection.Tillerson is no stranger to Russia’s Vladimir Putin as ExxonMobil has worked with Russian oil giant Rosneft to develop oil and natural gas fields in Russia and North America. AP Photo/RIA-Novosti, Alexei Nikolsky, Government Press Service

But this is only the latest episode of a tight relationship between energy and the U.S. government that stretches over decades.
Access to energy

In 1921, when Albert Fall accepted his position as secretary of the interior, he interpreted his responsibility to accelerate energy development on federal lands, including some in an out-of-the-way place known as Teapot Dome, Wyoming. And he believed that this meant involving private entities.

He brokered a deal with Harry Sinclair and Edward Doheny, major players in the booming American oil fields of the early 1900s, blazing a new trail for federal policy – a trail that laid clear the crucial relationship between energy development and political power. In Fall’s case, he personally accepted cash to allow this access to oil developers, which made him the first cabinet official to go to jail for crimes committed while serving in office.Albert B. Fall, the former secretary of the interior, became the first cabinet official to go to jail for accepting money from oil companies to clear the way for drilling on public lands. Library of Congress

Since its indiscreet beginning with Teapot Dome, of course, oil has only become more essential to the lives of every American. If we follow the lead of Life magazine creator Henry Luce, who referred to the 20th century as the “American Century,” we are by association also declaring it the era of fossil fuels and particularly of petroleum. Oil and other fossil fuels were the relatively inexpensive energy resources that provided the foundation for the modern consumer society and political policy often focused on ensuring that supplies be assured and kept stable.

Despite energy being central to our society, though, the policy influence of Big Oil most often functioned behind the scenes. For example, President Franklin Roosevelt in 1945 struck a deal in a secret meeting with King Ibn Saud to allow the U.S. and its allies to have access to Saudi oil for decades to come. During the ensuing decades, foreign oil development was carried out by international companies but often required the support, if discreet, of the U.S. government.
Out from behind the scenes

In domestic politics after 1950, the executives of oil corporations were often involved informally in elections, particularly as donors or lobbyists to candidates more friendly to the industry than others. Most often, though, Big Oil remained in the background.

In the modern era of heightened environmental awareness, Republican administrations typically created policies that benefited the oil companies. It was, for instance, the Reagan administration that sought to undermine the new environmental regulations of the 1970s, particularly with Anne Gorsuch as head of the Environmental Protection Agency and James Watt as secretary of the interior. It was Watt who allowed extensive energy development on federal lands under his jurisdiction – however, with no payment to himself.

Through the 1980s, energy resources on federal lands were opened to development, and environmental regulations were curbed to be more “friendly” to corporate interests. Most often, Reagan was unabashedly overt in his approach in this regard; however, Big Oil and energy were not cornerstones of his administration, per se.George W. Bush, pictured here with Saudi King Abdulla, traveled in 2008 to Saudi Arabia to ask the country to pump more oil in order to lower prices. It did not. AP Photo/Susan Walsh

The tenor and role of oil in government changed more substantially when George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush – both former oil executives – were in office. They prioritized an agenda that, while not confrontational, grew from incredibly close consultation with the energy industry that they knew so well.

Dick Cheney personifies the proximity of these energy interests to power during this era. After serving under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, Cheney was the CEO of one of the world’s largest drilling and rigging suppliers, Halliburton Inc., during the Clinton years before reemerging as George W. Bush’s vice president in 2000.

In the book “Private Empire,” journalist Steve Coll describes Cheney’s consultation with industry executives, from which the Bush energy policy took shape. These close consultations drew criticism for Cheney’s reluctance to disclose the participants and the apparent influence the industry had on policy.

Thus, a review of presidential administrations shows the growing clout of leaders from the energy industry. What’s perhaps more revealing, however, is the increasing willingness to allow this connection to be seen by the public – to view it as business as usual – as evidenced by Tillerson’s appointment.
Direction on foreign policy?

These political changes have come at a time of growing national awareness of the importance of energy, both as a source of wealth from the expansion of domestic drilling in the U.S. and as a contributor to climate change from burning fuels.

While the George W. Bush administration internally pressured government agencies to subdue scientific findings that supported climate change, the Obama administration used regulations and government science to pursue an agenda of mitigating climate change and adaptively planning for a different future. In this approach, climate change was included within the Department of State as a matter of national security.

Tillerson’s appointment, along with other cabinet appointees, suggests a major reversal on the nation’s serious treatment of the issue of climate change.

While Obama worked with over 100 nations to craft the 2015 Paris climate accord, ExxonMobil under Tillerson faced criticism and lawsuits accusing it of concealing the science that substantiated climate change.

Tillerson and the company, which traces its origins back to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil and has operated in about 200 countries and territories, is of course no stranger to foreign affairs and politics. Coll quotes Lee Raymond, Tillerson’s predecessor at the energy giant, as saying: “Presidents come and go; Exxon doesn’t come and go.”

As the 20th century closed, Coll described Exxon’s approach to policy in this fashion:


“The corporation’s lobbyists bent and shaped American foreign policy, as well as economic, climate, chemical and environmental regulation. Exxon maintained all-weather alliances with sympathetic American politicians while calling as little attention to its influence as possible.”

With Tillerson as the country’s top diplomat, the opportunity to redefine the rationale and methods for the entirety of our interactions with other nations is unparalleled. While this has been true to some extent since World War II, this appointment institutionalizes the view that our national diplomacy – much like a business – will be guided by resource acquisition, particularly energy.

This article has been corrected on January 31, 2017 to indicate that Halliburton is one of the largest oil services companies in the world, not the largest.


Author
Brian C. Black

Distinguished Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Pennsylvania State University



THE CONSERVATION



Environmental History: The Origins, Stakes, and Perspectives of a New Site for Research


 Fabien Locher
CNRS-EHESS
andGrégory Quenet
Université de Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines

Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine

2009/4 (No 56-4)


  • Pages : 224
  • ISBN : 9782701151083
  • DOI : 10.3917/rhmc.564.0007
  • Publisher : Belin

Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 2009/4


AN EXCERPT 
Environmental history was first constituted in the United States and planted its roots in the 1960's. In a climate strongly influenced by new left history and political activism, young historians, Roderick Nash and Donald Worster in particular, affirmed that a class of the oppressed is systematically forgotten: the earth, the biotope.[2]  Mark Cioc, Char Miller, "Interview with Roderick Nash,"...[2] We must, they say, write history "from the bottom up," starting with what is ignored, scorned and is not endowed with speech.[3]  Roderick Nash, "American Environmental History: A New...[3] It is a matter of giving a central role to the natural elements and of inserting them into all history books instead of unfurling the succession of kings, wars, and great ideas.[4]  Donald Worster, "History As Natural History: An Essay...[4] Let us recall that at the beginning of the 1960's in the United States, intellectual and political history still very widely dominates the profession.[5]  Robert Darnton, "Intellectual and cultural history,"...[5]
4
The birth of environmental history is generally said to be August, 1972, with a special number of the Pacific Historical Review and a famous article by Roderick Nash.[6]  Nash, "American Environmental," 362-372.[6] The choice of the journal marks the rise of environmentalism on West Coast campuses. Initiated by the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962, this heightened awareness triumphs on April 22, 1970 with the first Earth Day, one of the largest demonstrations ever organized in the United States gathering 20 million people.[7]  Sale Kirkpatrick, The Green Revolution. The American...[7] In this climate, in April 1974, John Opie edits an informational letter in environmental history which is followed by the creation of a journal, Environmental Review, in the fall of 1976.[8]  It will continue to be published under the name Environmental...[8] The American Society for Environmental History is founded in 1977.[9]  Carolyn Column, "From the President’s Desk," ASEH News,...[9] These birth dates are, however, misleading. First of all, this new field mobilizes earlier studies, for example those that were published by Samuel P. Hays on the history of conservation or the many publications on the history of forests (which has its own review since 1957).[10]  Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency;...[10] Secondly, environmental history remained a church of the catacombs all the way into the middle of the 1980's, with a journal that almost disappeared several times while the number of subscribers to its association was still less than 20 in 1987.[11]  "Interview with Hal K.Rothman," Environmental History,...[11] No academic position exists in environmental history and historians cling to a few welcoming campuses, like those of the University of California or the University of Kansas, to pursue their research in spite of the success of the first environmental studies majors with students.[12]  Mark Harvey, "Donald Worster. Interview ," Environmental...[12]
5
If this emergence remains fragile, it will also be formative for at least three reasons which, even when they are called into question, continue to weigh on the field today. The tie between environmentalism and environmental history is extremely strong for the first generation, which imagines its studies as a fulcrum for acting on the present.[13]  William Cronon, "The uses of environmental history,"...[13] Some do not hesitate to take public positions, for example Roderick Nash who writes the "Santa Barbara Declaration of Environmental Rights" to protest against the oil spill affecting the region in January, 1969.[14]  M. Cioc, C. Miller, "Interview with Roderick Nash,"...[14] Secondly, the rediscovery of the American roots of the relation to nature leads to the conviction that this nation invented the environment and, consequently, environmental history. The pioneering work of Roderick Nash on the "wilderness" allows for the rehabilitation of figures such as Aldo Leopold or John Muir.[15]  Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (1967)...[15] A third particularity comes from the attention paid to the degradation of nature through human actions, which opens new fields of research. Donald Worster is the figure who goes furthest in this direction, all the way to embodying, according to Hal Rothman, the "tragic school" of environmental history by underlining capitalism's responsibility.[16]  Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological...[16] He thus inaugurates a new narrative based on fall and decline as opposed to the reasonable use of nature by local populations.[17]  W. Cronon, "A place for stories: nature, history, and...[17]
6
The 1980's see the rise of a second generation whose works have now become classics in environmental history. Institutional fragility is counterbalanced by the incredible dynamism of researchers who throw themselves into a field under construction. Richard White and William Cronon rewrite the history of certain American regions through the perspective of climate change with a narrative that makes it impossible to separate humans from their environment.[18]  W. Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists,...[18] Carolyn Merchant rereads Bacon's scientific revolution in the light of the environment, arguing that it marks an essential turn in the relation to nature: nature is no longer a living whole but is instead divided and fragmented into private pieces of life that will constitute objects of scientific knowledge and domination.[19]  Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology...[19] By affirming the passage from a feminine conception of nature to a masculine one, Carolyn Merchant very early on offers a writing of environmental history that is attentive to gender.[20]  C. Merchant, ed., "Women and environmental history:...[20] Stephen Pyne constructs a total history of fire that combines the physical characteristics of the phenomenon with values, institutions, and beliefs.[21]  Stephen Pyne, Fire in America. A Cultural History of...[21] Thanks to the use of new sources, he unearths the rationality behind traditional methods of the use of fire which, far from destroying nature, allow for resource management. Finally, certain publications somewhere between scientific work and journalism contribute to structuring environmental history and to give it visibility.[22]  John McPhee, The Control of Nature (New York: Farrar,...[22]
7
To this list of new objects must be added objects that preexisted environmental history but to which its theoreticians lay claim. Given environmental history's marginality, this appropriation was initially of little consequence. In a first bibliographical assessment in 1985, Richard White explicitly sought to show that a new field was in the midst of being constituted on the basis of a series of dispersed objects. The many references show that he can rely on the ample and earlier bibliographies on the valorization of the American West: movements for conservation and preservation, the history of forests and forest services, the intellectual history of wilderness and of its major figures, the history of national parks, the study of landscapes and historical geography, the control of water supply, the valorization of agriculture.[23]  R. White, "American environmental history: the development...[23] On the other hand, certain objects are not included: risks, for example, emerge at the same moment in sociology and anthropology, probably because they are too often assimilated into technological risks.[24]  Mary Douglas, Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture: An...[24] Only insecticides provide an exception given that they link scientific theories, environmental transformation, and social change.[25]  John H. Perkins, Insects, Experts and the Insecticide...[25] The repercussions of Silent Spring explain this interest. The second half of the 1980's proposes new objects, some of which are sketched out in a programmatic way: fishing and the disappearance of resources in fish, air pollution, the consequences of the expansion of the suburbs, the history of gender and the environment, the environmental history of industry.[26]  Arthur McEvoy, The Fisherman’s Problem: Ecology and...[26] The columns of the Environmental History Review remain essentially filled with the United States. And yet elsewhere, the first studies in environmental history in African and Asian areas begin to emerge, for example hunting in Africa, forests in India, the occupation of land in China.[27]  John M. MacKenzie, The Empire of Nature: Hunting, Conservation...[27] These studies do not yet need to define themselves as part of environmental history. Studies on animals also have their own dynamic which was first situated in 18th and 19th century England with Keith Thomas and Harriet Ritvo before it reached the British colonies with John MacKenzie.[28]  Keith Thomas, Dans le jardin de la Nature. La mutation...[28]
8
Several lessons emerge from this second moment of US environmental history. The field was constituted through the invention of new objects more than through methods, concepts, or a theory of history. This inventiveness fully responds to the intuitions of its founders: we have to put nature into history, as much as we can, in order to draw out themes that had never before been studied. This territorial expansion can be translated through the inclusion of preexisting objects. Given that the first conference in environmental history did not take place until 1982 and was not widely attended, these ambitions were no more than a pipe dream.[29]  The conference took place at the University of California,...[29] But little by little the terms "nature" and "geographical" cede their ground to "ecological" and "environmental," in other words to another type of disciplinary inscription even if the content is not necessarily different.
9
The second lesson is found in the limits of a theoretical consensus, even if the Environmental Review does devote a special 1987 issue to theories of environmental history.[30]  "Special issue: theories of environmental history,"...[30] In 1990, the Journal of American History devotes an entire issue to the definition of environmental history.[31]  Journal of American History 76-4 (March 1990): 108...[31] The debate is extremely awkward because it is clear that the main figures in the field do not share the same theoretical positions on nature, even as they recognize a common identity in their practice of history. Stephen Pyne formulates this clearly when he states that he likes Donald Worster's histories but not his values; the disagreement is epistemological and political, while the agreement is empirical.[32]  Stephen J. Pyne, "Firestick history," The Journal of...[32]
10
When the first signs of recognition from historians begin to appear at the end of the 1980's, environmental history occupies an ambiguous place in the field of history. Historically, several proponents feel close to the wave of the 1960's, not only to new left history but also to women's studies, African-American history, Chicano history, and gay and lesbian history.[33]  W. Cronon, "Uses," 1-2.[33] Environmental history was nonetheless unable to occupy the same positions of power and lay claim to the constitution of a distinct territory by refusing to be integrated into curricula of general history.[34]  P. Novick, That Noble, 496, 459.[34] When it comes to defending the oppressed, there is an explicitly formulated sense that non-humans will always come after women, African-Americans, and other minorities.[35]  M. Harvey, "Donald Worster," 153-154.[35] Even as late as 1995, Alfred Crosby will reproach environmental history for being a sect, with its association, the AAEH, and its journal, writing and speaking for itself without influencing the heart of the historians' community.[36]  Alfred Crosby, "The past and present of environmental...[36] This institutional marginality preserves and maintains a certain distance from the post-modern turn of the 1980's. Environmental history is more attached to the ethical and activist dimension than it is to the subjectivity of the historian's point of view; it continues to affirm the certainty of the existence of materiality and of the facts to be reconstituted. In 1988, one of the best tableaux of American history in the 20th century can content itself with only one allusion to the environment, deeming it one of the era's new subjects into which young white liberal historians invest in a turn away from African-American studies.[37]  P. Novick, That Noble, 489-490.[37] In the following decade, the end of this marginality coincides with other deep transformations that unsettle the field.

Historical ecology: Past, present and future

Article (PDF Available)inBiological Reviews 90(4):997-1014 · August 2015 
DOI: 10.1111/brv.12141
Abstract
The term ‘historical ecology’ has been used with various meanings since the first half of the 20th century. Studies labelled as historical ecology have been produced in at least four academic disciplines: history, ecology, geography and anthropology. Although all those involved seem to agree that historical ecology concerns the historical interconnectedness of nature and human culture, this field of study has no unified methodology, specialized institutional background and common publication forums. Knowledge of the development of historical ecology is also limited. As a result, the current multitude of definitions of historical ecology is accompanied by divergent opinions as to where the origins of the field are to be sought. In this review, I follow the development of historical ecology from the 18th century to the present. In the first part, I briefly describe some early examples of historical ecological investigations, followed by a description of the various scientific strands in the 20th century that contributed to the formation of historical ecology. In the second part, I discuss the past five decades of historical ecological investigations in more detail, focusing mostly (but not exclusively) on works that their respective authors identified as historical ecology. I also examine the appearance and interconnectedness of the two main trends (ecological and anthropological) in historical ecological research. In the last part, I attempt to outline the future of historical ecology based on common features in existing research. It appears that at present historical ecology is at a crossroads. With rapidly growing interest in historical ecological research, it may move towards institutionalization or remain an umbrella term.