The green side of the conference (or: Why can't I be in three places on Friday afternoon?)

15 April 2012 – Cathy Stanton

As with digital history, environmental history and environmental issues are turning up across the 2012 conference program, part of the gradual but (I hope) increasing interest in finding ways to connect our historical work with the concern that many of us feel about climate change and all that relates to it.

For those who tend that way, Friday afternoon, with three terrific but concurrent environment-related sessions, is shaping up to be frustrating.  A scholarly panel, Making Use of Nature:  How Resources Became Commodities in America during the 19th Century, looks at the histories of salmon, tobacco, ice, and live food (oysters, anyone?), while a “field critique” session chaired by William Cronon will examine Mark Fiege’s new book Republic of Nature:  Rediscovering the Environmental Origins of American History (a book-signing will follow at 3 p.m. at the University of Washington Press booth, #410, in the Exhibit Hall).

And just to make the choice more difficult, a group of outstanding public historians will be presenting a panel on Historians and Climate Change during the same time block.  I’m really pleased to see this on the program;  it’s one facet of a conversation about climate and environment that has been building at NCPH conferences over the past few years (I wrote a couple of posts about earlier panels, in 2008 and 2010).

Fortunately, this panel is not opposite another group discussion emerging from within NCPH:  the Public History and Sustainability Working Group on Thursday at 10 a.m.  NCPH’s Working Group format allows for a more extended conversation before, during, and–in some cases–after the conference, and based on the preliminary exchanges among participants in this one, it looks as though there’s a real push to come out of Milwaukee with a public-history-oriented definition of the ubiquitous term “sustainability,” plus a plan for a stronger and more, well, sustained focus on this issue within the organization.  Three guiding principles seem to have emerged from these early conversations:

• History and historians must be included in efforts to solve complex problems related to sustaining communities and the environment.
• Human (cultural) landscapes and human bodies are part of nature; understanding human history and the built environment are key components for sustainable communities.
• Public history need models, training, and facilitation to encourage engagement in interdisciplinary partnerships and sustainability efforts.

It’s exciting that these discussions are moving closer to center stage for public historians, and I’m looking forward to seeing how we build on them in the next few years.

In the meantime, I just bought my carbon offsets for the flight to Milwaukee.  I know… Offsets are not a long-term solution to over-consumption of energy, any more than cap-and-trade is.  But if nothing else, paying a few extra dollars to offset the emissions of my trip is a reminder about the size of the carbon footprint for a large-scale conference like this year’s joint meeting, and the importance of doing a lot more than just talking about sustainability and climate.  (There are lots of carbon offset companies out there, some better than others;  the one I use, Native Energy, seems to have a good track record, and the cost to offset the ton of carbon that my flight to and from Boston will produce was just $14.)

For other environment-related conference panels, see the “Topics” pages of the program.

~ Cathy Stanton