The history of environmental pollution traces human-dominated ecological systems from the earliest civilizations to the present day.Caradonna, Jeremy L. (2014) Sustainability: A History. Oxford University Press, This history is characterized by the increased regional success of a particular society, followed by crises that were either resolved, producing sustainability, or not, leading to decline.Wright, R. (2004). A Short History of Progress. Toronto: Anansi. . In early human history, the use of fire and desire for specific foods may have altered the natural composition of plant and animal communities.Scholars, R. (2003). Stories from the Stone Age. Beyond Productions in association with S4C and S4C International. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved on: 16 April 2009. Between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, agrarian communities emerged which depended largely on their environment and the creation of a "structure of permanence."Clarke, W. C. (1977). "The Structure of Permanence: The Relevance of Self-Subsistence Communities for World Ecosystem Management," in Subsistence and Survival: Rural Ecology in the Pacific. Bayliss-Smith, T. and R. Feachem (eds). London: Academic Press, pp. 363–384. . .
The Western Industrial Revolution of the 18th to 19th centuries tapped into the vast growth potential of the energy in fossil fuels. Coal was used to power ever more efficient engines and later to generate electricity. Modern sanitation systems and advances in medicine protected large populations from disease. In the mid-20th century, a gathering environmental movement pointed out that there were environmental costs associated with the many material benefits that were now being enjoyed. In the late 20th century, environmental problems became global in scale.D.H. Meadows, D.L. Meadows, J. Randers, and W. Behrens III. (1972). The Limits to Growth. New York: Universe Books. .Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005). Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Biodiversity Synthesis. World Resources Institute, Washington, DC. Retrieved on: 2009-07-08-01. The 1973 and 1979 energy crises demonstrated the extent to which the global community had become dependent on non-renewable energy resources. By the 1970s, the ecological footprint of humanity exceeded the carrying capacity of earth, therefore the mode of life of humanity became unsustainable. In the 21st century, there is increasing global awareness of the threat posed by global climate change, produced largely by the burning of fossil fuels.U.S. Department of Commerce. Carbon Cycle Science. NOAA Earth System Research Laboratories. Retrieved on: 14 March 2009.BBC News (August 2008). In depth: "Climate Change." BBC News, UK. Retrieved on: 14 March 2009. Another major threat is biodiversity loss, caused primarily by land use change.
Early civilizations
In early human history, although the energy and other resource demands of nomadic hunter-gatherers were small, the use of fire and desire for specific foods may have altered the natural composition of plant and animal communities. Between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, agriculture emerged in various regions of the world.Wright, p. 55. Agrarian communities depended largely on their environment and the creation of a "structure of permanence". Societies outgrowing their local food supply or depleting critical resources either moved on or faced collapse.Diamond, J. (2005).Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Books. .
Archeological evidence suggests that the first civilizations arose in Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Egypt, both dating from around 3000 BCE. By 1000 BCE, civilizations were also established in the Indus Valley, China, Mexico, Peru, and in parts of Europe.Kramer, S. (1988). History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History. University of Pennsylvania Press; 3rd edition (April 1988), pp. 52–55..Wright, R., p. 42. Sumer illustrates issues central to the sustainability of human civilization.Wright, R., pp. 86–116 Sumerian cities practiced intensive, year-round agriculture from BCE. The surplus of storable food created by this economy allowed the population to settle in one place instead of migrating in search of wild foods and grazing land. It also allowed for a much greater population density. The development of agriculture in Mesopotamia required many labourers to build and maintain its irrigation system. This, in turn, led to political hierarchy, bureaucracy, and religious sanction, along with standing armies to protect the emergent civilization. Intensified agriculture allowed for population increase, but also led to deforestation in upstream areas with resultant flooding and over-irrigation, which raised soil salinity. While there was a shift from the cultivation of wheat to the more salt-tolerant barley, yields still diminished. Eventually, decreasing agricultural production and other factors led to the decline of the civilization. From 2100 BC to 1700 BC, it is estimated that the population was reduced by nearly sixty percent. Civilizations similarly thought to have eventually fallen because of poor management of resources include the Mayans, Anasazi and Easter Islanders, among many others.Diamond, J. (2005). Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W.W. Norton. .Diamond, J. (2005). Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. London: Penguin. . In contrast, stable communities of shifting cultivators and horticulturists existed in New Guinea and South America, and large agrarian communities in China, India and elsewhere have farmed in the same localities for centuries. Some Polynesian cultures have maintained stable communities for between 1,000 and 3,000 years on small islands with minimal resources using rahuiCook Islands National Environment Service. National Parks and Conservation Areas . Retrieved on: 2009-02-24. and kaitiakitangaMiller, D. N. Tüwharetoa & N. Kahungunu (2005). Western and Mäori Values for Sustainable Development. MWH New Zealand Ltd. Retrieved on: 2009-02-24. to control human pressure on the environment. In Sri Lanka nature reserves established during the reign of king Devanampiyatissa and dating back to 307 BC were devoted to sustainability and harmonious living with nature.
Emergence of industrial societies
Technological advances over several millennia gave humans increasing control over the environment. But it was the Western Industrial Revolution of the 18th to 19th centuries that tapped into the vast growth potential of the energy in fossil fuels. Coal was used to power ever more efficient engines and later to generate electricity. Modern sanitation systems and advances in medicine protected large populations from disease.Hilgenkamp, K. (2005). Environmental Health: Ecological Perspectives. London: Jones & Bartlett. . Such conditions led to a human population explosion and unprecedented industrial, technological and scientific growth that has continued to this day, marking the commencement of a period of global human influence known as the Anthropocene. From 1650 to 1850, the global population doubled from around 500 million to 1 billion people.Goudie A. (2005). The Human Impact on the Natural Environment. 6th ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. .
Concerns about the environmental and social impacts of industry were expressed by some Enlightenment political economists and through the Romantic movement of the 1800s. The Reverend Thomas Malthus, devised catastrophic and much-criticised theories of "overpopulation", while John Stuart Mill foresaw the desirability of a "stationary state" economy, thus anticipating concerns of the modern discipline of ecological economics.Martinez-Alier, J. (1987). Ecological Economics. London: Blackwell. .Schumacher, E. (1973). Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. London: Blond and Briggs. .Daly, H.E. & Farley, J. (2004). Ecological Economics: Principles and Applications. London: Island Press. . In the late 19th century Eugenius Warming was the first botanist to study physiological relations between plants and their environment, heralding the scientific discipline of ecology.Goodland, R.J. (1975). "The tropical origin of ecology: Eugen Warming's jubilee." Oikos 26: 240–245. Retrieved on: 2009-03-14
Early 20th century
By the 20th century, the Industrial Revolution had led to an exponential increase in the human consumption of resources. The increase in health, wealth and population was perceived as a simple path of progress.de Long, B. (2000). "Cornucopia: The Pace of Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century." Working Paper 7602. Cambridge, MA:National Bureau of Economic Research. However, in the 1930s economists began developing models of non-renewable resource management (see Hotelling's rule) and the sustainability of welfare in an economy that uses non-renewable resources (Hartwick's rule).
Ecology had now gained general acceptance as a scientific discipline, and many concepts vital to sustainability were being explored. These included: the interconnectedness of all living systems in a single living planetary system, the biosphere; the importance of natural cycles (of water, nutrients and other chemicals, materials, waste); and the passage of energy through trophic levels of living systems.Worster, D (1994) "Nature's economy: a history of ecological ideas". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mid 20th century: environmentalism
Following the deprivations of the great depression and World War II the developed world entered a new period of escalating growth, a post-1950s "great acceleration ... a surge in the human enterprise that has emphatically stamped humanity as a global geophysical force."Robin, L. (2008). "The 'Big Here and the Long Now': agendas for history and sustainability." Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University/Centre for Historical Research, National Museum of Australia. Retrieved on: 2009-03-16. A gathering environmental movement pointed out that there were environmental costs associated with the many material benefits that were now being enjoyed. Innovations in technology (including plastics, synthetic chemicals, nuclear energy) and the increasing use of fossil fuels, were transforming society. Modern industrial agriculture—the "Green Revolution"—was based on the development of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides which had devastating consequences for rural wildlife, as documented by American marine biologist, naturalist and environmentalist Rachel Carson in Silent Spring (1962).
In 1956, American geoscientist M. King Hubbert's peak oil theory predicted an inevitable peak of oil production, first in the United States (between 1965 and 1970), then in successive regions of the world—with a global peak expected thereafter.Grove, N. (1974). "Oil, the Dwindling Treasure." National Geographic. Retrieved on: 2009-03-29. In the 1970s environmentalism's concern with pollution, the population explosion, consumerism and the depletion of finite resources found expression in Small Is Beautiful, by British economist E. F. Schumacher in 1973, and The Limits to Growth published by the global think tank, the Club of Rome, in 1975.
Late 20th century