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Technological Advances: Debates About the Environment After 1900

Driving Question: What role have technological advancements played in both worsening and mitigating environmental challenges?

Humanity’s impacts on the planet have become so profound that many scholars believe we have entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which human activity has become the dominant impact on climate and the environment. There are over 8 billion of us on this planet. Our machines are powered by fuels that emit greenhouse gases that drive climate change. Our patterns of consumption and production are transforming ecosystems and polluting the Earth’s air, land, and water. At the same time, other species on the planet are rapidly disappearing. Still, the future is unwritten, and you have a part to play in shaping it. What will the world of tomorrow look like? What historical frames can help you prepare for what’s to come?

Learning Objectives

  1. Explain the causes and effects of environmental changes in the period from 1900 to the present.
  2. Use close reading skills to evaluate the impact of globalization on the environment.

Vocab Terms:

  • Anthropocene
  • biodiversity
  • civil disobedience
  • climate change
  • deforestation
  • drought
  • emissions
STEP 1

Opener: Technological Advances: Debates About the Environment After 1900

This activity is under development and will be coming soon!

STEP 2

The Anthropocene

Humans are altering the biosphere (the air, land, and water that makes up the Earth). Some scientists seek to highlight this process by calling the current epoch of geological time the Anthropocene. Do you think we’re living in a new epoch?

STEP 3

Population Explosion and Environmental Trends, 1880 to the Present

After growing relatively slowly for millennia, the human population has exploded in the last two hundred years, starting with the Industrial Revolution. This article explores how this demographic shift has impacted our climate, in monumental ways.

STEP 4

Causation: Environmental Change

STEP 5

Environmentalism

Environmentalism is often defined by conflicts: conservation versus preservation, mixed use versus full protection. This article explores the important trends, debates, and people involved in the environmental movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

STEP 6

Conflicts over Natural Resources

Because there are a limited amount of natural resources on Earth, it is perhaps unsurprising that conflicts emerge between nations over the control of those resources. Competition over natural resources has fueled violent conflict throughout the twentieth century and into the current era.

STEP 7

Closer: Technological Advances: Debates About the Environment After 1900

The story of LaDonna Brave Bull Allard and her fight to stop an oil pipeline from traversing Sioux territory provides a case study to think about the question of a “flat” versus a “lumpy” world.