Richard Walker expresses concern over the current state of environmental history, urging it to adopt a more assertive and impactful role in addressing pressing global issues like climate change and species extinction. Walker recommends learning from Weber, Marx, and Foucault to integrate causality, critique capitalism’s exploitation of nature, and challenge power structures in historical analysis. Additionally, Walker advocates for greater focus on cities as central to environmental impact and politics, incorporating insights from political ecology to understand the intersections of nature, economy, and social justice. Overall, the call is for environmental historians to move beyond academic confines and engage more actively with the major challenges of the modern world.
Richard Walker (Fri,) studied this question.