The Century of the Environment

Abstract

Much of this book has been concerned with thought, communication and action as they affected human relationships with the environment over a wide range of temporal and geographical scales. Scientific discovery and technological development promised to free humanity from much of the disease, hunger and poverty that had previously made human life so miserable. But such advances were not cost-free. That rapid change of fortune for an increasing proportion of the human population pressed against ‘the finite resources’ of the natural environment. It seemed to threaten social structures and time-honoured values (Howard and Louis 1998).