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Environmental History is about looking at the past as if the environment matters. American History is about looking at the past of not only the United States, but of both the American continents. This wider view is especially important when we realize that people occupied the Americas for over 15,000 years before Europeans arrived and that when the came to the Americas, Europeans focused their interest for centuries on areas that are not part of the current United States. As we get closer to the present, we will focus more on the U.S., but we’ll try to remind ourselves from time to time that we’re not the only nation in the Americas by considering how other nations have experienced and affected the environment.

There are two basic elements of looking at a past that includes the environment. First, we pay close attention to the physical world. For example, the shape of the American continents and the fact that they are connected to each other but cut off from the rest of the world has influenced American cultures from their prehistoric beginnings to the present. Landforms, waterways, natural resources, and climate have all been important factors in how our society has developed and how it continues to change. Second, we remember that how we think about the environment, like how we think about the past, has changed over time; and that those changes affect our current choices and actions. You don’t have to dig too deeply into current headlines to find debates raging over coal mining, oil pipelines, depleted fisheries, mass extinctions, and climate change. Our beliefs about the world around us and our role in it are important elements of the competing positions taken by advocates on either side of these important issues.

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