Co jsou to environmentální dějiny a proč se jimi zabývat
What is environmental history and why it should be dealt with

Summary/Abstract: The essay is an abridged and slightly modified version of the lecture delivered bythe author on October 28, 2009, at the Center for Advanced Studies of the MunichUniversity, which opened a series of public lectures and colloquies of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich. A full text of the lecturewas published under the title Das neue Rachel Carson Center in München oder Washeißt und zu welchem Ende betreibt man Umweltweltgeschichte? in 2010 as the secondissue of the internet journal RCC Perspectives. Available at: http://www.environmentandsociety.org/sites/default/files/2010_2.pdf. The author reminds of the roots andbeginnings of the institutionalization of environmental history in the United Statesduring the 1960s, which are connected with the name of marine biologist Rachel Carson, who at that time published a revolutionary book on devastating environmental effects of pesticides titled Silent Spring (1962). The author uses historical examples to illustrate how environmentalism and environmental awareness have changed since then; in terms of crossing borders between scientific disciplines,between states, and also between nature and civilization as two entities which are no longer perceived as opposite, but rather complementing and interlinked with each other. The awareness of unintended environmental consequences of human actions, as well as the understanding that the very perception of nature by humans determines its future shape, have increased as well. The author believes that environmental history enables seeing things in a new light, and offers an antidote against ignorance in relation to nature and against prophecies predicting destruction.

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