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Paper short abstract:

The convenors of the session will provide an overview of current debates concerning the role of Environmental History in the environmental crisis. They will introduce key terms, arguments, and positions that are significant in this debate.

Paper long abstract:

As the environmental crisis worsens (climate change, biodiversity loss, resource depletion, fossilist economy, and the energy transition), time for historical reflection seems to have become short. Historians are challenged to enlarge the scope and scale of their activities beyond understanding past and present phenomena towards more future-oriented approaches; action, it seems, has taken the place of analysis. Is this observation at all appropriate? Are historians even complicit in creating a new environmental urgency that defers historical examination to an afterthought?

In a joint introduction, the two convenors of the roundtable start from this provocation to reflect the difficult position of our discipline(s) in the midst of the great environmental crisis. Can we as environmental historians keep abreast of taking ecological problems and their envisioned solutions for granted? Can theoretical and methodical positions that mediate between critique and action be formulated? Is there a way for us as environmental historians to historicize the ecological crisis while simultaneously fostering green transitions? And is such a dual task desirable at all?

We will introduce key terms, arguments, and positions that are significant in the debate about the scope and function of environmental history in the Anthropocene. Additionally, we aim to outline some ideas on a radically historical concept of the environment that can be perceived as both a critical and forward-looking contribution to the contemporary environmental challenges.