Written by natural scientists and historians, The Silent Countdown explores relations between societies and their natural environment from the Middle Ages to the present. Global views of ecological history in the long term are provided as well as sophisticated models quantifying the flow of energy across regional ecosystems. The impact of processes of production and consumption upon the natural habit (clearing of forests, soil erosion), of high pollution densities in urban centers (smoke, stench, water pollution) are demonstrated: it is shown, how people reacted to it and how efficient the measures were to control it. Battles between the owners of iron works and chemical industries, the local councils, the experts and the suffering peole suggest a surprisingly early concern of a loss of natural environment in the face of industrialization.
This is a reprint of the original 1990 edition.
- Holistic Conceptions
- The Energy System - A Basic Concept of Environmental History
- From Ecological History to World Ecology
- The Early Loss of Ecological Stability in an Agrarian Region
- An Anthropological Perspective of Environment, Population, and Social Structure in the Alps
- Environmental History: Some Questions for a New Subdiscipline of History
- Reflections on a Typology of Historical Pollution: Complementary Conceptions
- Agricultural and Sylvicultural Impacts
- Aspects of Historical Soil Erosion in Western Europe
- Natural Environment and Human Settlement over the Central European Lowland in the 13th Century
- Sylviculture and Forest Administration in Hungary 11th-20th Centuries
- The Ecological Background of the Livelihood of Peasants in Kuusamo (NE Finland) During the Period 1670-1970
- Urban and Industrial Impacts
- Environmental History - The Environmental Evidence
- "Policey" and Environment as a Form of "Social Discipline" in Early Modern Hamburg
- Environmental Policy in 19th-Century Leyden
- Air Pollution in York 1850-1900
- Experts in the Smelter Smoke Debate
- The Ruhr Basin 1850-1980: A Case of Large-Scale Environmental Pollution
- Environmental Consciousness
- The Evolution of Environmental Sensitivity 1750-1950
- The Obscure Problems: Rationalization, Power, and the Discovery of Environmental Problems