At a level accessible to the educated lay reader, this book describes the changes human activities have produced in the global environment from 300 years ago to the present day. It offers a comprehensive and authoritative inventory of human impact in its varied forms on the oceans, atmosphere, and climate--ranging from long-standing alterations to new and surprising ones that have emerged in recent years, from environmental disasters to success stories of environmental management, and false alarms. This balanced, nonpolemical survey will interest all those concerned about the environment and...

This book is devoted to the exploration of environmental Prometheanism, the belief that human beings can and should master nature and remake it for the better. Meyer considers, among others, the question of why Prometheanism today is usually found on the political right while environmentalism is on the left.
Chapters examine the works of leading Promethean thinkers of nineteenth and early and mid-twentieth century Britain, France, America, and Russia and how they tied their beliefs about the earth to a progressive, left-wing politics. Meyer reconstructs the logic of this progressive...