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NY Historian Discusses Climate Change

October 8, 2008 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

Steven Leibo, Ph.D., Professor of International History and Politics at the Sage Colleges in Albany offered an interesting piece last week on his experience with Al Gore’s climate change initiative at the History News Network. “Historians & the Climate Crisis” considers how and why historians should interact with the issue of climate change:

In my own case, once I had become comfortable with the science of contemporary climate change, I began to reflect not just on humanity’s future as climate change becomes more and more obvious but on how it has played out in the past. And even more importantly in what specific ways we professional historians can contribute to this newest and historically profound challenge that faces humanity.

The core question of course is what our current climate challenge has to do with the profession of historian. Human-made climate change is after all a problem more of the present and future rather than the historical material we so often focus on. But from the perspective of at least this historian such an attitude could not be more incorrect. Historians have an enormous role to play in this great challenge.

I am of course, one of those historians who thinks that a good knowledge of the past does an excellent job in helping one understand the present and even to make reasonably educated guesses about the future. But that is not the core issue. Our relationship with the natural environment has been one of the most important factors in human history. True, for a time professional historians rejected the sort of environmental determinism which once so intrigued scholars. But to suggest climate is not profoundly important is to misrepresent much of the historical record.

Check out the full piece here.

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Filed Under: History Tagged With: Environmental History, Public History

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  1. Ellen says

    October 9, 2008 at 7:06 PM

    Historians could certainly add to the body of knowledge about climate change in concrete ways. I am thinking of the lost family journals of the prominent Geddes family of Syracuse, where they kept detailed daily weather observations from 1800 to the 1880s, across several generations. And I’m sure there are other such treasure troves of data to be found by historians.

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