The Environment in World History

Uniting business history and global environmental history

“…48 Such ecological processes are global in scope and scale (climate change, biological invasion, sea-level rise), 49 but the scholars who study them depend on 'nature's archives' in the form of ice core samples, tree rings and paleo records. 50 Others have adopted Wallerstein's 'modern-world-system' to understand environmental transformations on a global scale, or the role of environmental and scientific knowledge in enabling these global commodity flows. 51 As Alf Hornborg has emphasised, global environmental history is about examining how landscape changes in core areas (e.g., metropole, Global North) have been intimately tied to those in peripheral areas (e.g., colonies, Global South).…”

The Role of Metallurgy in Transforming Global Forests.

“…Charcoal is a fundamental component of bloomery (or solid-state) smelting to extract iron from an ore, and it was also used as fuel in earlier examples of blast furnaces and fineries. In the UK, it was not until the development of coke-fuelled blast furnaces in the eighteenth century that the iron industry was freed from dependence on the speed at which trees grew King 24); in the USA, the reliance on charcoal continued until the late nineteenth century, when up to 75 per cent of iron was still produced using charcoal as fuel (Mosley 2010: 33; see also Muntz 1960). Fuel, whether in the form of wood or charcoal, may also be required at several further stages of the iron production process depending on the technology being undertaken, which might include fire-setting to extract ores, roasting or pre-treating ores prior to smelting, or refining of pig iron (to remove excess carbon and other unwanted elements).…”

The demand for environmental quality in driving transitions to low-polluting energy sources

“…First, economic development has been associated with a shift from agriculture to heavy, then light industry, and finally services. Each of these sectors required different energy services, different energy sources and imposes different environmental damages (Mosley 2010). Second, as more "cleaner" technology is produced and used, unit costs may fall.…”