ABSTRACT
Environmental science – or ecology – was born in the nineteenth century. Although it was apparent, and, to some extent, appreciated before then, the human impact on nature in terms of pollution, resource depletion and species decline only came to be properly understood in light of the unprecedentedly rapid scientific and technological development of that age. British leadership in industrialization, trade and imperial expansion also made it a key creator of many of these newly appreciated concerns. Nineteenth-century Britain was central to the conceptualization of environmental problems but also a key architect of them. When environmental politics fully took off in the 1960s concerns about resource depletion due to unsustainable population growth at the global level were a key catalyst. Overpopulation, both at the local and global levels, appeared to risk eating up the world’s food and fuel with catastrophic consequences.
