Once upon a time all history was environmental history. Life was governed by the seasons. When the weather gods were fickle, misery followed.
Human societies used their ingenuity to wield fire, dam rivers, cut down forests: all to mitigate the risks of living. They harnessed the power of the animals they shared shelter with. Every culture had its gods of beneficence; every culture had dreams of plenty.
A thousand years ago, those dreams grew more insistent. The scale of human impact on Earth expanded with the growth in human numbers. The range of possible futures inched wider.
But the twinned foes of famine and epidemic never receded for long. And then things changed. The most privileged people in the world began to think that the human battle against nature could be won.
They believed that natural limits no longer hindered their quest for wealth and power. They believed that instant access to the prehistoric solar energy embedded in fossil fuels made them invulnerable. Their steam engines and lethal weapons conquered the world.
In pursuit of freedom, they poisoned rivers, razed hills, made forests disappear, terrorized surviving animals and drove them to the brink of extinction. In pursuit of freedom, they took away the freedom of others. The most powerful people in the world believed, and some still believe, that human beings and other forms of life on Earth are but resources to be exploited, to be moved around at will.
Almost eight hundred years separate the Charter of the.