The Environment: A History of the Idea with Prof. Sverker Sörlin

In this inaugural episode of the SPHERE podcast, Prof. Sverker Sörlin explains how the idea of “the environment” emerged at the outset of a radical reconfiguration of the human-environment relationship precipitated by an unprecedented post-war economic expansion that put enormous pressure on ecosystems and the Earth. The point of departure for this discussion on the rise of global environmental governance is The Environment: A History of the Idea (Johns Hopkins UP 2018), a foundational work for the ERC-funded research project SPHERE—Study of the Planetary Human-Environment Relationship.