ABSTRACT
This chapter explores some aspects of the changing ideas, and in particular the relevance of environmental change to economic conditions, both in the past and prospectively in the future. The essentially episodic and local nature of environmental change is a theme reiterated by Russell in 1956, in the same conference on man’s role in changing the face of the earth to which Sauer also contributed. One of the major milestones on the road to a revised view of environmental change is the 1957 classic work by Charlesworth. Europe’s other major marginal zone has attracted much more attention over the last three decades than the northern lands, at least among English-speaking scholars. Separate sets of events have awakened concern about the possibility of climatic change and the potential impact on the world as a whole and the major regions.
