01 - Liquid Empire | with Corey Ross

00:00:00: Modern Empire at least, and I think people would argue the same about The Early Modern Period wasn't just sort of a social political project with environmental effects.

00:00:07: It was this kind of socio-environmental Project in and of itself Kind of like what historians of energy have been arguing About Energy.

00:00:14: right well you can make many other similar arguments about water.

00:00:17: You know if who gets to pollute it?

00:00:18: Who gets to use that?

00:00:19: he gets To distribute all these things produce and reproduce power Differentials.

00:00:23: so If you start following the Water you actually Can get out A lot Of interesting Things.

00:00:42: Welcome to Off the Road, a podcast about environmental humanities.

00:00:46: Beyond policy or science we explore meaningful stories and conversations

00:01:06: and how water is used as a tool of colonial power or resistance.

00:01:10: Corey currently serves as Professor of European Global Studies at the Europa Institute University of Basel, and is still attached to The University of Birmingham where he previously served as a professor of modern history And he's written great books on environmental history broadly.

00:01:26: Today we'll cover mostly his most recent book called Liquid Empire Water Power and Ecology in A Colonial Word a world which appeared with Princeton University Press in two thousand twenty four.

00:01:37: But, In the past core he has also written about an empire and an ecology.

00:01:41: another context.

00:01:42: for example this book Ecology Empowering The Age of Empire Which Appeared With Oxford University Press And Two Thousand and Seventeen was awarded with George Louis Beer Prize Of American Historical Association.

00:01:53: Very Nice!

00:01:53: Um...And of course his very first Book About German Empire Building I suppose called Media and the Making of Modern Germany, Mass Communications, Politics & Society from The Empire to the Third Reich which also appeared with Oxford University Press in two thousand eight.

00:02:11: We are very excited to have Kori here today.

00:02:13: so welcome Kori.

00:02:15: thanks for stopping by!

00:02:16: Thanks for inviting me!

00:02:17: Welcome!

00:02:18: Kori.

00:02:19: we want to start a bit your journey into becoming an environmental historian.

00:02:24: you're actually the first environmental historian on our podcast And looking into your bio, I noticed that you studied a combination of history and biology in your bachelor's which we spoke earlier about.

00:02:38: where did your studies?

00:02:40: You study it in the United States.

00:02:42: The combination of History & Biology would be an unlikely combination at least in Germany!

00:02:48: So i just wanted to ask by saying what made you decide to pursue this double major or double bachelor degree in History & Biology?

00:02:58: Like most things in life, this was more accident than plan.

00:03:02: I actually started studying at bachelor's level... ...I started a pre-medical program and thought that I wanted to be doctor And i really liked all the science.

00:03:11: so it is taking on my anatomy and physiology... ...and organic chemistry.

00:03:15: everything else did fine with it.

00:03:17: But then couple of thing happened.

00:03:20: First my sister who now nurse practitioner practically a doctor and the US.

00:03:25: she was working in this field, she's older than me.

00:03:29: You realize that you really hate hospitals and don't particularly like being around ill people.

00:03:34: so maybe you might want to reassess your current career trajectory I thought made a fair bit of sense.

00:03:41: So i wasn't too convinced about medicine anymore but wanted continue with science stuff finish degree biology.

00:03:47: then other things happened.

00:03:49: This is of course a sign of my age, but so I studied bachelors from nineteen eighty seven to ninety one and you know A few interesting things happened in that period.

00:03:57: One was the fall Of The Wall which made history courses really Interesting!The other Was i went To a small liberal arts college And like all of the science majors it's had a Really good pre-med program.

00:04:07: That's why i went there...and also to play on their football team.

00:04:11: i mean Like soccer proper football But..the real.

00:04:17: Like all science majors, we had to take a certain number of humanities courses.

00:04:21: So suddenly I said that'll take some history courses and take the odd literature course.

00:04:24: just get this out-of-the way in my third year.

00:04:27: But of course with All Of The Things Going On In Europe Suddenly it was really quite an interesting time too And iIwas quite fascinated With This Whole Idea Which Was Quite New To Me In Many Ways That You Know.

00:04:38: There Just Weren't Any Right Answers Too A Lot Of The Questions Being Asked.

00:04:43: I could memorize a glycolysis chain and do all of that work.

00:04:46: fine for science, but... ...I just was really fascinated by some other humanities subjects.

00:04:51: So I got so into it that i'd just had enough credits still left That I could fulfill the requirements for history major as well.

00:04:59: Like I said pretty much by accident.

00:05:03: Then after that you know Basically, I was thinking well maybe I might go to med school after all but why don't i try and do an man history?

00:05:12: And then.

00:05:12: I got funding to Do one in Washington and Then doors just kept opening and so the unlikely result is that I ended up doing History rather than something else cool

00:05:24: and um even at a time The environment Was probably very and Very unlikely point of focus for doing history, right?

00:05:32: Yeah.

00:05:32: In some sense... What got you started on the environment as a topic in history?

00:05:36: Ah!

00:05:37: Okay well when I was doing my biology studies A lot of my profs were kind of You know Well a couple of them anyway.

00:05:46: We're sort-of card carrying friends Of The Earth and would often do Explain things through environmental lenses Whether it had to Do with atmosphere or biodiversity Or anything else.

00:05:56: So i got really into these Things And a lot of my hobby reading ever since I was an undergraduate, it wasn't kind of on environmental things sort of popular environmental science Of various types or you know Things like.

00:06:08: I don't know if your familiar works of Michael Pollan You know the omnivores dilemma or that?

00:06:13: The botany of desire just really interesting things like that.

00:06:18: So I was always into environmental things but it was hobby-reading.

00:06:22: So then, of course I did all the social history and cultural history mainly on Germany.

00:06:26: And after I finished that two thousand eight book you mentioned... ...I thought why not try to do something else?

00:06:33: Why don't make your hobby reading professional readings?

00:06:36: so environment-history environmental history let's do that.

00:06:41: yeah That is kind how i got into it.

00:06:44: What was first focus within environmental history like?

00:06:47: what really attracted you?

00:06:49: Those are two slightly different things.

00:06:52: I wanted not just to sort of start doing something about environment and history but also move a little bit away from my focus on Germany, A Little Bit Of France.

00:07:00: A Little bit Of Britain And so you know without what while still being able To draw on knowledge of European History.

00:07:08: So i thought well empire recommends itself?

00:07:20: basic, amateurish mistakes when I started publishing a bit on Africa or other regions.

00:07:26: So that's what really got me into the sort of field i've been working in since then.

00:07:32: but there were a few books...I guess..there was always a few.

00:07:42: If you do empire and environment, obviously the work of Alfred Crosby is there in Colombian exchange.

00:07:48: And ecological imperialism.

00:07:51: but probably a thing that really clenched it for me The most was John McNeil's Something New Under the Sun which I just thought.

00:08:00: And then I read Joachim Radkow, which sort of opened up the European side of environmental history a little bit more for me.

00:08:07: Those three books funneled in that direction and just thought this is what i want to do!

00:08:12: Yeah... What was the state of environmental History at the time?

00:08:15: I mean..I suppose it's still rather new.

00:08:18: probably the books you just named were also groundbreaking In some sense.... What was your experience with the discipline at the Time?

00:08:25: At Which time did

00:08:28: you start working actively on the topic.

00:08:30: Ah, okay.

00:08:31: When I started working actively on it well... It was already kind of starting to boom!

00:08:36: Uh..I can hardly sort-of claim to be a first mover in this field at all.

00:08:41: but uh... ...I remember going.... I think it was two thousand and ten or eleven going down my first European Society of Environmental History big congress um And being impressed by hey how big it was Be how diverse it was methodologically, thematically and seeing perhaps almost most importantly how young it was.

00:09:05: I mean i was only about you know forty couple then... ...and i was one of the older people at the conference.. ..and thought this is great!

00:09:12: This really not like going to conferences doing modern German history where yeah so that really caught my eye.

00:09:22: And what it was like studying then or getting into this field, well I felt a PhD student all over again.

00:09:29: You know?

00:09:29: Having to get in new fields and up to speed being more uncertain than i had felt for years when actually presented things.

00:09:37: thinking are these people going?

00:09:39: make of that?

00:09:40: but the feedback is really great constructive which think one thing about environmental history.

00:09:46: we have common Set of interests obviously, but also feel quite strongly about them.

00:09:52: I think they're important issues.

00:09:54: I think most people working in the field do and so it tends to be quite a supportive And constructive field to work in.

00:10:01: It was and probably is less So nowadays.

00:10:04: back then it was more under theorized than it is now?

00:10:08: I think that's probably the main difference.

00:10:09: That's happened over the last fifteen years.

00:10:14: But uh...and i think some of that has come from a bit of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization, little more.

00:10:20: we read human geographers.

00:10:21: Maybe even literature people like yourselves and I think that's helped us a lot as well.

00:10:28: That kind of answers your question there?

00:10:30: Sorry!

00:10:30: We can cut.

00:10:34: You mentioned that you attended the Conference of the European Society for Environmental History, around fifteen years ago.

00:10:42: Did also attend in the past somewhere in US society?

00:10:46: And I was in Europe because... ...I also attended many and also brought in scholars from other fields.. ..and everyone said it's a very welcoming environment.

00:10:58: so i wanted to ask what is your

00:11:00: opinion on this?

00:11:01: At the ASEH?

00:11:03: Yes,

00:11:03: also at the AES in the US.

00:11:06: Yeah that's what I mean The American Society but

00:11:08: also in Europe.

00:11:09: if this network through the conference you made your standard Your Network Oh

00:11:16: definitely met loads and loads of people some of them People who are doing have done Some fantastic work.

00:11:23: i already knew Paul Warder at Cambridge a little bit But got to knowing better there just a whole lot of people, really.

00:11:32: They were really well attended by Americans too back then probably more than they are now.

00:11:38: maybe it was a bit more of a novelty to have an European society thing and of course American scholars in the summer always want sort-of... A conference trip holiday to Europe which is pretty common.

00:11:50: but I've only gone to The American Society for Environmental History once Usually because it falls at an awkward time of year for the semester here, also because I don't really like flying partly for environmental reasons.

00:12:03: Partly for all the other reasons.

00:12:05: what John McNeill once told me that dreaded rituals of airports and but one time when was in Chicago really good did something together with various scholars on environment development And got to see my very good friend Julia Adonai Thomas who is just, you know such a clever head when it comes to talking about all things environmental history and Anthropocene related.

00:12:35: So yeah but the networks there as well are they overlap completely between the European and American side?

00:12:41: The real challenge of course is kind of overlapped with network elsewhere.

00:12:46: now There's big budding scene in India Of course lot scholars working on China But their mostly based in North America, Europe as well.

00:12:54: And you know there's just lots of potential to bring in scholars from other parts of the world and I think increasingly we need to do that perhaps above all when we're dealing with questions of empire and post-coloniality an environment where... We haven't done enough of it yet so that's still a open field that needs work.

00:13:12: yeah

00:13:13: definitely!

00:13:24: But first we would like to ask for the non-expert audience, what does historian of European imperialism actually look at?

00:13:34: And what role does the environment play in this approach.

00:13:38: I mean you briefly touched... Yeah

00:13:42: well i guess the Germans would say and what is a historian of empire cover?

00:13:45: it's all a lie.

00:13:46: just all kinds things obviously policy cultural discourse ideas, knowledge.

00:13:53: Knowledge circulation science labor you name it Transimperial connections increasingly of course.

00:14:02: So I would argue that the environments everywhere in all these thematic fields and That we get a better understanding of all of them.

00:14:11: if we have to take the environment into account then not as a separate thing but something that is not just in the background but an integral part of the entire imperial project.

00:14:25: In my last book, The Twenty Seventeen Book you mentioned I sort of basically tried to argue that a modern empire at least and i think people would argue this same about the early modern period wasn't just sort of social political projects with environmental effects.

00:14:39: it was kind of socio-environmental project in itself.

00:14:43: I mean environments set certain parameters.

00:14:45: You can think if there's no environmental determinism set parameters within which certain things could happen or not.

00:14:54: But if ideas about the environment infused all kinds of areas, you know?

00:14:59: Ideas about racial hierarchies, tropicality social efficiency and in the obsession with that in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth centuries... And all this helps legitimize the sense Europeans have a right to control biophysical environments peoples who allegedly can't control them well enough themselves.

00:15:24: So there's lots and lots of things that you could do in this area, so look at it two ways right?

00:15:32: Environments shape the geography of empire through disease regimes soils climate all kinds of obvious way Right And at same time empires I would argue strongly Really powerfully shaped environments.

00:15:47: There's a big question.

00:15:48: one of the Big Open questions, and it's been debated a lot almost implicitly more than explicitly is how How far?

00:15:57: The sort of advent particularly of modern imperialism Modern European Imperialism or Western imperialism really marks a say zero in the environmental history Of subjugated territories And the juries you know still a bit out on that.

00:16:11: people can argue argue it in different directions a bit, but I would say that you know broadly speaking It was pretty big though.

00:16:19: It wasn't as deep as many of the As many scholars would have us believe for there's this sort of huge sort of like colonial fall-of-man type Of narrative that everything was rosy beforehand.

00:16:32: That certainly not the case But nonetheless, I think any kind of sense that this was just a mere blip.

00:16:40: This is argument.

00:16:41: some Africanist historians tend to look at the period of European empire in Africa as more an episode because it not only lasted seventy years and many places.

00:16:49: but i think that runs great risk for underestimating.

00:16:53: changes took place then also longer term legacies those change in terms setting switches institutionally culturally politically so many different ways infrastructurally.

00:17:06: So those are really some of the ways in which I think environment just plays a central role.

00:17:11: And

00:17:12: then your new book, or most recent one you focus on water?

00:17:18: The book is called Liquid Empire.

00:17:20: What's it about?

00:17:21: Well its trying to use water as lens Well, I guess to shed new light on certain facets of modern European imperialism and that's not to say that other Imperialisms weren't equally important.

00:17:37: And try to make some links with Japan in the United States less with the Ottoman Empire But just give some kind of sensible boundaries to the topic.

00:17:49: The reason I wanted to do this well as from the Ecology & Power book in twenty seventeen I was you know focused on a lot of commodity production Then on conservation issues and then sort of like late colonialism, post-colonial hangovers.

00:18:05: But most if it was terrestrial—like in environmental history at the time —was.

00:18:09: but as I said just now water issues were everywhere.

00:18:12: so when i thinking about doing a new project why not take them separately?

00:18:19: Of course you can't treat them separately but make them central focus.

00:18:24: And then I started thinking, well what can you do with water better than a terrestrial focus?

00:18:32: There are some things that make water an interesting object of analysis and not just in these imperial settings but anywhere.

00:18:43: It links so much together, right?

00:18:45: So if you build a hydroelectric dam somewhere You know there's trade-offs.

00:18:50: You're affecting fishers downstream your effecting agriculture affecting irrigation potential Your affecting navigation potential and one change in one sphere affects all the others also.

00:19:02: of course water And ideas about water often pays very little attention to political borders, so that makes it interesting from a trans-imperial perspective.

00:19:13: Of course there's the whole political ecology angle of this right?

00:19:17: It is bound up with power kind like what historians have been arguing about energy.

00:19:21: Right well you can make many similar arguments if you get who gets to pollute or use and distribute all these things produce and reproduce differentials.

00:19:31: So If you start following the water You actually could add lots.

00:19:36: So that's what the book is trying to do, and I guess it has this subtitle Water in Power.

00:19:43: But also because of the hydrosphere so interlinked with numerous aspects together.

00:19:51: there was a lot of great literature before i came along on dams a bit on drainage and swamp wasteland reclamation, whatever you want to call it.

00:20:06: But pretty much just focused on these single topics.

00:20:09: but there were always issues like lurking... Okay all right here's the drainage.

00:20:13: now I'm seeing this protests by fishing people in Burma Delta or wherever else.

00:20:17: so they're also interlinked.

00:20:19: So i thought really important is treat kind of hydrosphere together with multiple urban water agriculture navigation power generation, et cetera.

00:20:32: Also fisheries to treat them together because it reflects the integratedness of the hydrosphere.

00:20:39: so that's what the book tries to do.

00:20:41: doesn't always succeed at integrating these things but at least its a good first try.

00:20:47: I think yeah.

00:20:47: i mean thats also such complex issue.

00:20:49: water like energy is everywhere right in some sense?

00:20:53: But you write about um... That water being used by colonial powers, for example to exert control over colonized peoples about the environment.

00:21:04: Could you give us some examples of what that could look like or what forms took in a past?

00:21:10: Oh there's all kinds.

00:21:12: so water control is central to produce sort-of making agricultural lands more productive.

00:21:19: and this isn't again my original idea.

00:21:23: others have written similar Um, not just overcoming it particularly in dry or semi-dry lands.

00:21:30: Or monsoon.

00:21:31: um lands.

00:21:33: It's not just about overcoming aridity.

00:21:35: It's about overcoming Um temporality its about overcoming seasonality.

00:21:39: They're actually an excellent recent book by tier tanco Roy very eminent economic historian at the LSE that really deals with this question of seasonality.

00:21:48: So it's actually kind of a new temporal regime as well.

00:21:51: And this just, you know it's classic James Scott stuff right?

00:21:54: It helps make lands more legible.

00:21:56: It makes them more productive and makes some more governable.

00:22:00: So irrigation is critical.

00:22:02: um...and again so-called wasteland reclamation either drylands through irrigation or indeed huge marshy areas like in Southeast Asia that become the leading rice producing or a rice exporting region of the world.

00:22:18: It takes enormous, enormous hydrological infrastructure.

00:22:22: but again to make these areas governable and one of the interesting things about this is you know we talk about.

00:22:27: how do states use this to dominate?

00:22:30: Well they do.

00:22:30: I mean incredibly deliberately quite strategically.

00:22:35: But it only really works that well when there's an overlap with certain indigenous interests as well, you know whether Indigenous elites to boost the revenue potential of their lands once they become irrigated.

00:22:47: Or indeed just with ordinary farmers who are looking for new land and really quite keen to acquire a new land on some of these new frontier regions that either being drained or being irrigated for the first time.

00:23:02: so those by way have couple examples.

00:23:05: but there's also complicate the story about water and power in a colonial world.

00:23:14: In your book, you also explore many utopian or unrealized projects like early twentieth century Atlantropa by Hermann Sörgel.

00:23:21: until the more recent Transaqua.

00:23:23: these kinds of grandiose planning engineering visions wanted to shape environment.

00:23:27: often considering it as blank canvas could give our audience who are only listening sense such project which one do find most fascinating?

00:23:37: Well, it's easy.

00:23:38: if anyone is interested just go and Google images.

00:23:41: type in Atlantropa.

00:23:42: And you'll get some really nice colour images from the Deutsches Museum.

00:23:46: Trans-Aqua there are all kinds of plans and sketches out here.

00:23:52: Let us see both those projects that are interesting at Trans-Acqua currently.

00:23:56: It has been an idea since the nineteen seventies.

00:23:59: Atlantropa, just because it was so utopian.

00:24:03: Such a sort of product of interwar cultural pessimism yet at the same time technocratic impulses.

00:24:10: Also interesting because it garnered so much attention from pan-Europeanists At The Time Yet Was also in a sense kind of progressive post national In a sense.

00:24:22: you had to say I'm deeply deeply Imperial and really quite racist Not in a sort of overt way, but all the assumptions behind it were about creating more land or making lands more suitable for European settlement because of the idea that Europe didn't have enough land etc.

00:24:40: So those projects.

00:24:42: and also Atlantropus was fascinating because its sheer hubris... I mean the idea of damning Gibraltar is so incredibly mad!

00:24:51: What are they trying to do?

00:24:54: bit of sea between Europe and Africa, is that correct?

00:24:56: Well yeah to put a dam across the straits of Gibraltar.

00:24:59: And then because of the evaporation differential between the Mediterranean basin in The Atlantic, the Mediterranean would drop there also where it'd been concurrent dams you know from the Black Sea.

00:25:09: so the Mediterranean Would Drop!

00:25:11: The idea was too... That would create more land.

00:25:14: like most water projects It promised numerous benefits at once right?

00:25:18: Create More Land for European Settlement.

00:25:20: it would supposedly humidify the climate in North Africa to make it more productive.

00:25:25: At the same time, with all of these huge dams that were being created just generate a tonne and tonne hydroelectricity that could be transported around Europe.

00:25:36: It's completely crazy idea.

00:25:38: but I mean what makes this so interesting is how many adherents had And of course Philip Lehmann work on this was really excellent.

00:25:46: So those are very interesting.

00:25:48: Trans-Arc was interesting because it sort of harkens back Plans.

00:25:53: this is basically an idea to like I said since the seventies and backed by some in the EU now quite high up China's interested in financing it that Basically revolves around damming most of the tributaries of the Congo River The right side tributary as it goes flows downstream And building a huge canal system to top-up Lake Chad Which has you know, been dwindling for a long time Many theories suggest because of climate change and they link that with all the violence, lawlessness and state weakness in this region.

00:26:30: But there's a lot debate about whether Lake Chad is actually disappearing or if it has much to do with climate change as long-term period fluctuates.

00:26:41: but anyway another example for technological solutions partly a technological problem, but not only a technological problems.

00:26:51: So it's fiercely debated whether it'll ever happen as of course anybody's guess.

00:26:55: But it sort recalls many projects in the past whereby that are defined or characterized by enormous technological optimism and this promise of solving multiple problems at once greater aridity or desertification hydropower, navigation.

00:27:18: They promised to sort of be a silver bullet for many different issues whereas in reality there's usually trade-offs between these things.

00:27:24: it was hard to generate electricity and use the canal for navigation at the same time.

00:27:28: There are just design problems but also this idea that seeing Africa is kind of like a blank canvas on which technocrats can cast their visions modernizing vision And a great example of that was the Saharan sea, and I haven't doubted it.

00:27:44: The only one who's written about that by any means but write-about in the book as well exhibited all these same characteristics.

00:27:50: basic idea to inundate some shot.

00:27:55: they're called low lying regions.

00:27:57: northern Tunisia parts Algeria below sea level thought once to have been an inland sea flood.

00:28:05: these by building a canal to the Tunisian coast and humidifying the climate, creating navigation benefits etc.

00:28:13: A strange sounding project that thankfully for French investors never went ahead despite But one that, again lived on.

00:28:24: People tried to revive it in the nineteen teens Again as during the Algerian War of Independence some French engineers thought It would be a clever idea To create the canal by using a few nuclear bombs and there were even studies In the eighties about whether it could be revived.

00:28:42: And its not only such an idea.

00:28:44: In the Qatar desert in Egypt There are similar ideas About how you can use depressions on below sea level to humidify climates, to create hydropower.

00:28:55: To do all kinds of supposedly clever things but they're interesting at multiple levels.

00:29:03: maybe I should leave it that Thanks.

00:29:09: Now we move the last section and this is about teaching environmental history.

00:29:16: This year I started myself teaching environmental history, an introductory course to the field.

00:29:22: To bachelor and master students And they see that many of them were enrolled in this course not say all.

00:29:32: They choose these courses because their interested about environmental problems.

00:29:38: And I wanted to ask in your experience as a teacher, if the students come with the same enthusiasm from day one or how do you introduce that topic?

00:29:49: In general.

00:29:50: Yeah

00:29:51: okay mostly they do so when offer big introduction to global environmental history lecture course.

00:29:59: it's really full and thats good.

00:30:03: So mostly don't have to sort of sell the importance of the topic to students these days, which is great.

00:30:10: I think the younger generation just gets it much better than mine did.

00:30:16: so i look at my job not so much to sort-of awaken that interest as to sort of channel and challenge it... not challenge the interests but challenge some of the assumptions behind that interest or problematize it.

00:30:29: you know by looking at ways that environmental history can surprise us And the students, they come there.

00:30:36: They're kind of lean green right on and have the right instincts in things.

00:30:43: that's all great.

00:30:44: but some other things even empires modern states did haven't been bad sometimes their you know... Things are turned around.

00:30:52: look at reforestation for instance.

00:30:56: And, you know it's not all just the usual suspects.

00:30:59: It mainly is of course but its'nt at all just a usual suspect who are responsible for environmental degradation.

00:31:06: and by no means although there´s huge links in one could explore that forever between capitalism an environmental degradation other social systems produced as much environment catastrophe as capitalism has.

00:31:21: so its problematizing sort things like assumptions that they bring in turn, and then it's actually a lot more complicated than even the environmental movement itself which we generally take usually rightly so as fairly unalloyed good thing has a lot of assumptions behind.

00:31:37: It is quite splintered within.

00:31:42: So, you know people get really quite interested when your contrast the so-called environmentalism of The rich with the environmentalism Of the poor.

00:31:48: and see what does environment is mean in different parts of the world?

00:31:52: And one can really see the holes in some of our own assumptions.

00:31:54: So that's why I try to do with students Um and also of course always point out the trade offs right because of course a lot of these changes That we've seen in the last You know hundreds years have been great for humanity.

00:32:07: I mean just look at the reduction of poverty relative poverty in the last fifty years under neoliberalism sort of, right?

00:32:14: But look at what else has happened.

00:32:16: Look at the environmental cost but really to draw their attention to the trade-offs involved because they're... The more we are aware of trade-off's In the past ,the more can be aware of the trade off and current environmental policy issues.

00:32:30: Because there always is There

00:32:34: And you challenging your students assumptions about what environmental history can provide.

00:32:40: But are there also ways in which the, I guess intuitive interests of your lean and green students informs their own research or the kinds of places and historical periods you would like to look at in your research?

00:32:53: Students not... they don't so much maybe influence what i want to look.

00:32:58: At but they certainly influenced how i think about what i am looking because they're not aware of the vast historiography that's behind some of the issues we are looking at.

00:33:13: and then suddenly you realize, wow actually it is a pretty basic fundamental question.

00:33:18: I hadn't really thought about why.

00:33:20: so mainly thats where i get out teaching to students its just slightly different perspective on sometimes different generational perspectives in what most inspires me research next to how I'll do it.

00:33:38: It's often colleagues working more widely in the field, or indeed one of the benefits being at an interdisciplinary institute is you get completely different stimuli from other directions.

00:33:50: You know?

00:33:51: I start talking about rivers and things like this that i've been looking at.

00:33:54: then lawyers will suddenly pipe up saying okay what about rights issue... What are the incunabulae of them...?

00:34:01: Or How does that look at rivers as legal beings change their story?

00:34:06: if you're talking about, I don't know, flood controls or something like this.

00:34:12: Because there's another story that I deal with in the book is an economist will say okay so your saying... This certainly not a optimal way to handle flooding because it's socially unjust Or actually its just locking in longer term technological lock-in kinds of problems.

00:34:32: Ok but The way economists think about optimization economic point of view, maybe it is the optimal way to deal with flooding.

00:34:39: And so you get challenges from different quarters.

00:34:43: I don't know if you're familiar with the NCCR program.

00:34:46: It's a big SNF The Swiss National Science Foundation main sort-of biggest core funding instrument geared to do big multi disciplinary project and was involved in a Big Bid.

00:34:58: that got quite a ways but we didn't get.

00:35:03: That was really helpful in making me think about how other disciplines can alter a little bit, the questions you ask.

00:35:11: For historians it's always a bit tough not just to play the role of being background information provider but build change over time and historical analysis into these interdisciplinary things.

00:35:23: that has drawn me more towards thinking Without being too teleological histories of issues that we face right now That are actually quite burning in concrete and just looking at how these path dependencies have developed.

00:35:38: So it's pulled me a little bit more towards the present than probably otherwise would be the case.

00:35:45: We ever find out question

00:35:47: And many of your students Do they aspire to become environmental historian?

00:35:51: or you saw some of them become?

00:35:53: Environmental historian or meet them in the conferences

00:35:58: not yet In Birmingham, not really.

00:36:03: A couple of them did MAs in this field but then I think they got out and in Basel I just haven't been there long enough to see what happens...I suspect very few want to be environmental historians If any.

00:36:17: many of the students who come to my course, they're either doing history or they're doing what interdisciplinary MA?

00:36:22: Or something like that and many are interested in sustainability issues as a Sustainability Studies program involves elective.

00:36:28: probably aren't many universities these days so I suspect that Very few of them will end up being environmental historians But i think quite A Few Of Them Will Probably Be Working In Areas That Have To do With It Sustainability Whether it's Finance or Policy or you know Consulting Whatever.

00:36:46: So I'd like to think, at least making a little mark on them with my historical background even if they don't become environmental historians themselves.

00:36:56: And that is it for today with Off the Road, A Podcast about Environmental Humanities!

00:37:01: Thanks so much to our guests who are coming here and we hope you will join us in this episode.

00:37:08: until then take care

00:37:10: bye.