#EnvHist Worth Reading: July 2024

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Every month I carefully track the most popular and significant environmental history articles, videos, audio, and other items making their way through the online environmental history (#envhist) community. You can read all of our past #EnvHist Worth Reading lists right here. Here are my choices for items most worth reading from July 2024:

1. The ghosts of the Arctic are stirring back to life

This ABC News article by Stephanie March and Matt Davis revolves around a Soviet ghost mining town on Svalbard called Pyramiden. “At its peak it was home to as many as 2,000 people, until it was eventually abandoned after the fall of the Soviet Union, leaving behind an eerie wonderland of desolation and decay,” they write. Russian activity in the town is now stirring once more and is thought to be an outpost of the country’s Arctic ambitions. March and Davis cover the growing tourism industry in Pyramiden and provide an overview of the settlement’s history, accompanied by some gorgeous photography.

2. Wally’s Dream Of A Wilder New West

This Yellowstonian article by Todd Wilkinson is part review of the new Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country: Ruin, Realism and Possibility in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2024) edited collection and part interview with one of the collection’s editors, Mark Fiege. Wallace Stegner, who is credited by many as the originator of “America’s best idea” discourse surrounding national parks, was a prominent New West scholar and subsequently an architect of much of our modern American West mythology. Wilkinson and Fiege both argue that although many of Stegner’s ideas are passe today, they still hold massive cultural significance and ingenuity. “Stegner still matters in multiple ways. Anyone who wants to understand the West and places like Yellowstone must come to grips with its history, and Stegner has a prominent place in that history. He both wrote about Western history and was a player in it. Someone today might not like Stegner, but he mattered back then and he matters now,” states Fiege.

3. The Real History Behind the Tornado-Control Theories in Twisters

Twisters, the long-awaited sequel to 1996’s Twister, is definitely one of the most talked about films of Summer 2024. In her piece for Time, Kate Carpenter looks at the long history of trying different methods to stop and control tornadoes. “Researchers and members of the public alike have proposed various schemes to stop tornadoes over the decades. None have been feasible enough to test, let alone work. But the real problem with this approach is that, while trying to stop a tornado makes for compelling movie drama, in the real world resources could be better spent on studying and implementing more practical solutions for saving lives and property in the path of tornadoes,” Carpenter writes. Weather modification attempts began in the 1940s in the United States, and Carpenter shows that these attempts intensified during the Cold War era and continue to this day.

4. Decolonising Plant Relations Through Creative Practice

This piece on White Horse Press’ Blog by Kristina Van Dexter is a short, but inspiring, overview of the way in which colonial systems have disengaged us from our relationship with plants and forests and also from the kind of embodiment and embodied language that accompanies this relationship. Van Dexter writes that in their forthcoming book they “delve deeper into these themes, exploring how we can learn from forests to cultivate a grammar of forest futurities embodied in relations and oriented toward collective resurgence.” I appreciated Van Dexter’s reflections and arguments in this essays and was inspired to go and sit with my plants in our garden.

5. The Bishnoi: Revisiting Religious Environmentalism and Traditional Forest and Wildlife Management in the Thar Desert

This Arcadia article by Amir Sohel and Farhat Naz outlines an incident in Indian history that was new to me. In 1730, 363 members of the Bishnoi community were killed in what could be considered India’s first organized environmental movement. Sohel and Naz describe the origins of the Bishnoi community and their spiritual beliefs, which centered tree and animal protection. In 1730, the ruler of Jodhpur needed timber for a new palace and sent soldiers to a Bishnoi village to fell the trees needed. The trees were sacred to the community, and they hugged the trees to try to protect them, which led to the massacre. Sohel and Naz connect this history to current issues facing the Bishnoi community.

Feature Image: “Tornado” by Frank Peters is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
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Jessica DeWitt

is an environmental historian of Canada and the United States, editor, project manager, and digital communications strategist. She earned her PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan in 2019. She is an executive member, editor-in-chief, and social media editor for the Network in Canadian History and Environment (NiCHE). Additionally, she is the Managing Editor for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. She is also a working board member of the Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society and Girls Rock Saskatoon and a Coordinating Team member of Showing Up for Racial Justice Saskatoon-Treaty Six. A passionate social justice advocate, she focuses on developing digital techniques and communications that bridge the divide between academia and the general public in order to democratize knowledge access. You can find out more about her and her freelance services at jessicamdewitt.com.

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