为什么我们需要环境史

Why We Need Environmental History

现代环境危机要求一种新的史学和历史意识。我们要以全新的眼光审视历史 ,将其视为人与自然之间长期交互作用、彼此挑战、彼此改变的历史。环境史己经在世界上许多国家出现 ,它对于那些试图应对危机的科学家和政策制定者实际上有很大的帮助。环境史可以对资源保护以及环境保护主义———现代社会中两种强大的政治力量———的兴起提供更深刻的理解。环境史有助于生态学以及其他环境科学提出更富有创见、更加成熟的解决问题的方法。环境史有助于我们更深刻、更富批判性地了解我们的经济文化和制度 ,特别是占有统治地位的资本主义的经济文化及其对地球所造成的后果。环境史可以让我们对我们所栖居的每一个特定的地方———我们必须在那里发现更好的生活方式———有更深邃的了解。

The modern environmental crisis requires a new kind of history or sense of the past. We must see history in a radical new light, as a story of people interacting with nature over time, each challenging and changing the other. That new history,which is already appearing in countries around the world, has many practical uses for scientists and policy makers who are trying to meet the crisis. It can provide a deeper understanding of the rise of conservation and environmentalism, which are powerful political forces in modern societies. It can help make ecology and other environmental sciences more thoughtful and sophisticated in their approach to problem solving. It can furnish more profound and critical knowledge of our economic culture and institutions, especially the dominant economic culture of capitalism, and of their consequences for the earth. And it can offer a deeper understanding of the particular places in which we live, the places where we must find better ways to live.