Environmental problems have always been part of our history, of life, and work. Yet the way in which environmental problems are perceived and politicized has changed: If it was at first chiefly local and regional environmental problems that were recognized, in recent years global environmental...

When historians in the far distant future look back upon the tumultuous twentieth century, they will likely judge the most outstanding feature to be the extraordinary increase in human numbers that has occurred during this relatively short time period. It took the entire history of humanity –...