How can we best influence and enact a shift beyond “doom and gloom” when we talk about the environment? The letters in this Perspectives volume are responses to this dilemma. Through an exploration of new environmental narratives, this volume aims to stimulate readers to emotionally reflect on how we can embrace hope and resilience in our stories about the environment.
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What does history tell us about energy transitions? What do energy transitions tell us about the history of colonialism? This volume of RCC Perspectives presents five histories of colonial projects that transformed potential energy sources in Africa, Europe, North America, and Greenland into mechanical energy for wealth production.
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Energy must be seen in interaction with transportation and industry in order for its role in South-Central Africa to be fully understood. This article traces the history of energy, industrialization, and transportation from the pre-colonial through the colonial period.
American knowledge of British coal practices had at least two crucial implications for the timing and shape of the nation’s first fossil fuel energy transition. This story suggests that attention to transnational contexts can help us better understand how, when, and why energy transitions occur.
This essay considers how the Kaprun project launched by Germany drove two critical but neglected energy transitions in postwar Austria.
This paper looks at how the master-servant politics of British indirect rule (ruling the colonized through their traditional authorities and structures) related to the production of coal and coal-using industries in Nigeria.
About eight percent of Earth’s freshwater is located in Greenland. Theoretically, this would mean that Greenland has some of the greatest potential for hydropower in the whole world. However, nearly all its freshwater is permanently frozen.
A cross-cultural dialogue on the cultural and environmental history of mountains in China.
Reflects on how one best selects a research question in environmental history. Three Ps are offered as guidance: personal interests, practical matters, procedural concerns, professional considerations, and public issues.
This essay addresses the challenges of collecting and interpreting data for environmental history in East Africa’s highlands.
