Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Yale Professor James Gustave Speth for a discussion of his career in the environmental movement. Professor Speth traces his changing perspective on the appropriate response to the environmental crisis. Concluding that only a radical transformation of capitalism will save the planet for future generations, he outlines the changes in consciousness and in the political agenda that will be required. (54 minutes)

British Secretary of State for the Environment joins UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler for a discussion of the politics of environmental policy. (45 min)

Current Challenges in Biodiversity and Conservation, Volume 1 is the third book created by undergraduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts (USA). The series examines the causes and consequences of global biodiversity loss and species extinction.What's new? This open text format promotes the adaptation of materials. After all, biodiversity loss and conservation efforts are rapidly changing, and this information must be updated to stay relevant and accessible.Citation: Bakermans, M.H., L. Hanly, and W. San Martín, Eds. 2023. Current Challenges in Biodiversity and Conservation, Volume 1. Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA. https://doi.org/10.55900/n3bqx5fpThis book is licensed CC BY-NC 4.0..

This presentation offers resources and strategies to encourage the use of digital and environmental approaches to teaching World History including the use of contemporary and historical maps to foster spatial reasoning skills; assigning students to create interactive maps and virtual globes; and using visualization tools that show environmental change over time.

The purpose of this course is to familiarize undergraduate students with environmental history as a discipline, as well as introduce them to the Atlantic World as a region of study by focusing on the late fifteenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. This course does not assume previous experience with history courses and is intended to be a broad survey that encompasses several global regions. The course is arranged both thematically and geographically and emphasizes environmental change in the context of the eastern and southern coasts of the United States, the Caribbean, central and southeastern Mexico, Brazil, West Africa, and the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts of Europe throughout the early modern period. 

This course examines how the natural world has shaped and been shaped by the exercise of state power over time. It considers how the pursuit of natural wealth has led people and governments to alter the world around them, and what the consequences of those alterations have been for natural and human communities. It considers places and practices as wide-ranging as silver production in sixteenth-century South America, sugar in the eighteenth-century Caribbean, opium in nineteenth-century India, cocaine in twentieth century Latin America and the United States, and petroleum in the modern Middle East. It examines how capital investment in labor and technology has reflected political regimes and how the production and circulation of natural commodities have shaped global patterns of forced and free migration. It will also examine global themes such as imperialism and colonialism, the spread of epidemic diseases, and global capitalism, among others.

This course is a history, from ancient to modern times, of the interactions between human societies and the natural environment, including other forms of life that inhabit the planet. This course investigates how environmental changes have affected the history of human societies, and also how human activity has transformed nature.

This course provides a survey of World History through the lens of human interactions with the environment. From the evolution of ​Homo Sapiens​ through to the present we will examine the ways in which the environment shaped, and has been shaped by, world historical events. Among the major topics this course will focus on are the importance of water to the rise of sedentary societies and empires, natural disasters, disease, capitalism and the environment, the impacts of European expansion and imperialism, and climate change. This syllabus is for a six-week course taught online. 

Focusing primarily on the period since 1500, explores the influence of climate, topography, plants, animals, and microorganisms on human history and the reciprocal influence of people on the environment. Topics include the European encounter with the Americas, the impact of modern technology, and the historical roots of the current environmental crisis.

Focusing primarily on the period since 1500, explores the influence of climate, topography, plants, animals, and microorganisms on human history and the reciprocal influence of people on the environment. Topics include the European encounter with the Americas, the impact of modern technology, and the historical roots of the current environmental crisis.

Polar ice sheets are sensitive indicators of current climate and also preserve evidence of past climate conditions. Scientists studying Earth's climate history core thousands of meters deep into ancient ice to retrieve gas bubbles trapped in ice sheets. Ice cores help reconstruct climatic conditions from hundreds of thousands of years ago. Join Dr. Jeff Severinghaus as he explains how gas bubbles are trapped, how they provide detailed chemical clues to the past and how they are helping to shape future climate scenarios. (45 minutes)

Climate has enormous impacts on the marine life off California, influencing its major fisheries and the abundance of krill, seabirds and mammals. Join Tony Koslow as he shows how a 60-year ocean observation program, the California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (or CalCOFI) is unraveling the impacts of the El Ni–o/La Ni–a cycle and human-induced climate. (52 minutes)

Charles Kennel explores how the convergence of earth science, biology, and social science through the use of information technology can lead to continuous awareness of Earth's systems, enabling coordinated responses to the global environmental challenges that face us now and in the future. (58 minutes)

The Chukchi Sea, a broad and shallow sea between Siberia and Alaska, has a profound influence on Arctic climate and on the supply of fresh water and nutrients to the Arctic Ocean. Join Scripps Oceanography geophysicist Neal Driscoll as he presents research findings from two Arctic cruises onboard the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy that provide intriguing new insightsinto the complex climatic and sea level history of the Arctic. (55 minutes)

The sun dominates life on our Planet, yet we know astonishingly little about long-term variation in solar activity and how it might have influenced EarthŐs climate. Join Devendra Lal as he explains how chemical clues locked in Antarctic ice can reconstruct 1,000 years of solar activity and how this knowledge is critical to understanding EarthŐs climate history. (52 minutes)

This activity is a field investigation of plant succession stages, which students will gather evidence of the areas plant history.

We will doggedly ask two questions in this class: “What is history?” and “How do you do it in 2010?” In pursuit of the answers, we will survey a variety of approaches to the past used by historians writing in the last several decades. We will examine how these historians conceive of their object of study, how they use primary sources as a basis for their accounts, how they structure the narrative and analytical discussion of their topic, and the advantages and limitations of their approaches.

This subject examines some of the many ways that contemporary historians interpret the past, as well as the multiple types of sources on which they rely for evidence. It is by no means an exhaustive survey, but the topics and readings have been chosen to give a sense of the diversity of work that is encompassed in the discipline of history.