Reply To: September 22: Sverker Sörlin's History is a Nightmare

Reply to Sabbath’s reflection on the lecture and Nature’s End by Sörlin and Warde by Maria

I think Sabbath has made a well formulated summary of the book and the lecture. It is easy to follow his thoughts, what he agrees and disagrees with. Sabbaths’ notion that written history today, according to Sörlin, is much better regarding environmental history, is interesting. By writing about war, migration, colonialism etc., I believe that many of the early historians unconsciously reported on courses of events that today could be interpreted as describing changes or impact in nature by human activity. But I find it difficult to follow Sabbath’s comment that “Both recorded and unrecorded evidence…”. To me “unrecorded past” means that you cannot find it in a library. Oral traditions etc are important historical documents that I think is difficult, or even impossible, to file, and as that more exposed to be altered as time pass. I fully agree with Sabbath that environmental history is not ONE discipline today, but needs to include experts from both humanities, economics, science and maybe even business.