The Sydney Tar Ponds are a huge waste site in Nova Scotia, Canada that contains large amounts of toxic chemicals. The ponds formed in a river mouth, where steel corporations let their largely coal-based pollutants and sludge drain off for many decades.
The history of the Swiss National Park is told for the first time in Creating Wilderness. The deliberate reinterpretation of the American idea of the national park, as implemented in Yellowstone, was innovative and radical, but its consequences were not limited to Switzerland. The Swiss park became the prime example of a “scientific national park,” thereby influencing the course of national parks worldwide.
Powerless Science? looks at complex historical, social, and political dynamics, made up of public controversies, environmental and health crises, economic interests, and political responses, and demonstrates how and to what extent scientific knowledge about toxicants has been caught between scientific, economic, and political imperatives.
Managing the Unknown offers essays that show that deficient knowledge is a far more pervasive challenge in resource history than conventional readings suggest. Furthermore, environmental ignorance does not inevitably shrink with the march of scientific progress. This volume combines insights from different continents as well as the seas in between and thus sketches outlines of an emerging global resource history.
McAfee examines the changing roles of scientists and politicians in the decision-making processes that affect the environment.
Wild Earth 12, no. 3, features essays on a cultural transformation towards sustainability, commerce and wilderness, the role of literary intellectuals in conservation, and the preservation of wildlands in Mexico.
In this chapter of the virtual exhibition “Ludwig Leichhardt: A German Explorer’s Letters Home from Australia,” cultural studies researcher Heike Hartmann presents the traveps of Dr. Leichhardt’s letters—from the unexplored expanses of Australia to the archives of the Deutsches Museum.
Seventeen letters sent by Ludwig Leichhardt from 1842–48 vividly depict his stay in Australia. In this exhibition curated by historian Heike Hartmann, we are introducing a brand new English translation of the letters and a timeline tool with which to view those, this virtual exhibition documents Leichhardt’s adventurous stay in Australia and opens up new perspectives for the environmental history of the land, Europeans’ engagement with its indigenous population, and international scientific networks at the time.
Heike Hartmann
