Forward to Early Modern Geological Agency

This thematic issue responds to the growing demand for ‘more history’ on the part of the earth sciences and environmental politics. The impending climate crisis—the iconic images of which range from the melting poles to the drowning water-city of Venice and the burning of Brazilian and Australian forests—creates a broad, heavily debated and politically explosive field of science in action. Current studies at the crossroads of the natural sciences, the social sciences and the humanities, which run under the label of ‘Anthropocene’, reflect on the origins of the human induced environmental disaster we live in. The term is a neologism coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer; it stems from geology and originally referred to a possible new geological epoch, after the Holocene, in which humankind has become a major geological force that is transforming the planet in visible and fundamental ways.