Notes on Contributors Preface Introduction; S.Sörlin & P.Warde PART I: THE RISE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL Imperialism and Environmental Change: Unearthing the Origins and Evolution of Global Environmental History; R.Grove & V.Damodaran Habitat, Possession and Community: Reflections on the History of Conservation Ideas; B.Adams The Field of Action: Agriculture and the Defining of the Environment in Pre-Industrial Europe; P.Warde The Global Warming That Did Not Happen: Historicizing Glaciology and Climate Change; S.Sörlin Genealogies of the Ecological Moment: Planning, Complexity and the Emergence of 'the Environment' as Politics in West Germany, 1949-1982; H.Nehring PART II: HISTORY AND THE ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES The Environmental History of Mountain Regions; R.Dodgshon Interdisciplinary Conversations: the Collective Model; A.Davies New Science for Sustainability in an Ancient Land; L.Robin PART III: MAKING SPACE: ENVIRONMENTS AND THEIR CONTEXTS Fifty-four, Forty, or Fight? Writing within and across Boundaries in North American Environmental History; M.Evenden & G.Wynn Modernity and the Politics of Waste in Britain; T.Cooper Why Intensity? Reflections on Long-Term Changes to Chinese Farming and the Institutional Steering of Modifications to the Environment; M.Elvin 'The pernicious calamities that occasion...hunger': Climate Variability and Social Vulnerability in Colonial Mexico; G.Endfield PART IV: 'THINGS HUMAN' Destiny and Decision: Taking the Lifeworld Seriously in Environmental History; K.Hastrup Afterword; P.Burke Index