Recently, I've transformed my thinking about the human history of #ClimateChange. My field, #ClimHist, tends to emphasize stories of crisis and collapse. Yet I increasingly believe that resilience has been the rule, rather than the exception. 1/8 #EnvHist aeon.co/essays/the-lit…
When I started working on "The Frigid Golden Age," I thought I'd found a wild exception to the crises that beset almost every other civilization during the Little Ice Age (LIA) - and similar periods of past #ClimateChange. Parts of the book are framed around that exception. 2/8
But I was confused as to why, in other histories, the Dutch were lumped in among the victims of the LIA. Over time, I realized that by looking on small spatiotemporal scales, the disasters confidently related to climate in other histories took on a very different character. 3/8
I've come to believe that the sweeping generalizations that once typified #ClimHist - the notion that past #ClimateChange inevitably led to crisis and collapse - often break down wherever and whenever we explore what really happened on small scales in time and place. 4/8
In particular, by finally paying heed to Indigenous voices, scholars now know that diverse Indigenous communities - previously associated with some of the worst #climate collapses - now appear to have been especially flexible and adaptive in the face of the LIA. 5/8
This article summarizes some of my new thinking. It's only the first public expression of a much bigger research project that I'm pursuing with a large and brilliant team of environmental historians, archaeologists, and paleoclimatologists. Much more to come! 6/8
Of course, the climate changes of the LIA pale in comparison to those of today. But I hope my colleagues on #ClimateTwitter will finally stop saying that the modest climate changes of the past inevitably led to social disaster. It's disempowering - and inaccurate. 7/8
And I hope that we can now use the past to tell more complex stories about the relationship between climatic and societal change. No, everything will not be fine. But no, we probably aren't doomed. Both extremes are likely untrue - and pull us away from constructive action. 8/8
