The first topic was a typical staple of eighteenth-century thought, and an opportunity for paying homage to a premise that Arthur O. Lovejoy described as “one of the most curious monuments of human imbecility” – namely, the idea that the earth was created for “Man.” As Lovejoy detailed in his classical study The Great Chain of Being, this essentially static or closed scheme of creation would eventually collapse under its own weight and be displaced by an open, temporalized model of the universe. Bond’s approach to the topic was fairly standard, with the occasional learned allusion to Pope’s Essay on Man and reflections on humanity’s middling place in Creation between the angels and the brute animal. These gestures of mock humility allowed Bond to restate the Society’s founding mission “to increase the Power of Man over Matter, and multiply the Conveniencies or Pleasures of Life” by conducting “useful” experiments, mapping, charting, draining, and “improving” the new country, still largely unexplored, and waiting to be claimed and transformed.

Using a combination of computer model simulations and evidence derived from natural and textual archives, scholars have come to understand that climate change shaped the human history of North America from first settlement to the present. The advance and retreat of continent-straddling ice sheets during the Pleistocene sculpted its distinctive landscape, while the smaller oscillations of the relatively warm Medieval Climate Anomaly and the cooler Little Ice Age influenced the fate of its peoples. Since the nineteenth century, warming driven by human greenhouse gas emissions increased the likelihood of weather extremes that inspired political and social change across the United States. It is in this dynamic context that ideas of climate change found expression in American literary culture.

This chapter offers a critical analysis of the relationship between postmodernism and the environment, in particular the climate and climatic change. It outlines an alternative understanding of postmodernism and the literature of the period that resists normative assumptions regarding culture eclipsing nature during this postmodern period. Reading across canonical postmodern texts, genre fiction, and social movements literature, it identifies within this body of work a persistent preoccupation with resource scarcity, pollution, environmental degradation, and, in particular, anthropogenic climate change. Arguing that this tendency with postmodernism necessitates a rethinking of the archives of climate literature, this chapter argues that the period designation "postmodern" names a transition point in how climate is imagined, a period within which we can identify the emergence of an understanding of the global climate that is focused increasingly on environmental threats, their predictive modeling, and the cumulative effects of industrial and nuclear civilization.

We are living in a time when the line between “climate” and “weather,” and our understanding of what these terms mean, is changing. This chapter shows that such significations were never stable, and our understanding of these terms has changed over time. In fact, our understanding of climate – as the expected weather in a region over a particular period of time – is a relatively recent one, emerging only about 150 years ago. This chapter argues that the evolution of our thinking about climate was catalyzed and assimilated by Europeans’ colonization of the Americas. These trans- and multinational efforts initiated and sustained scientific inquiry into what exactly climate is and how it functions on a planetary scale. In tracing climate theories from the early colonial period to the present, this chapter shows how earlier theories laid the groundwork for modern meteorology and climatology. And, ultimately, it argues that our current understanding of climate – including our coping with global and local climate changes – shares with earlier epistemologies an enmeshment of nature and culture that might productively point us toward creative and crucial solutions for our climate crises.

The success of the Anthropocene concept relies on the esthetic of the sublime. It rejuvenates old cultural tropes – the geological sublime, the sublime of the fall, technological sublime, and the sublime of the scientific discovery. What is the function of this anthropocenic sublime? As liberal intellectuals converted to environmental concerns and proclaimed the end of grand narratives, the Anthropocene provided a new grandiose narrative. Theorizing the movement of humanity as a telluric force seems much more exciting than reflecting on modes of production, energy transition, or degrowth. But for contemporary political ecology, the Anthropocene esthetic is problematic: It sublimates capitalism whose strength is now compared to geological forces; it tends to erase inequalities and the politics of environmental harm for a depoliticized fascination for planetary collapse; it fuels the dream of a conscious geological agent, gearing the destiny of the planet under the guidance of an international scientific elite. Geoengineering lurks behind the sublime of the Anthropocene.

This essay examines the degeneration thesis, as formulated by Buffon and taken up in the so-called dispute of the New World. Early colonial observers such as Acosta and Catesby engaged with the classical climate-determinist paradigm, with its north–south orientation of climate zones. Buffon drew on these natural history observations, Enlightenment social theory, and the new geoscience and reoriented climate determinism on an east–west axis. Buffon posited that America had emerged more recently than Europe from oceanic submergence and was thus colder and wetter – and that therefore America’s climate was more favorable to the production of supposedly inferior animals such as insects and reptiles and less favorable to larger mammals and humans. Implications for human development were vigorously contested by Americans such as Jefferson and reoriented again along a global north–south axis, notably by Hegel. The degeneration thesis enjoyed a long legacy, surfacing in the United States in nativist-populist responses to demographic issues. The essay concludes by identifying two such episodes, early twentieth-century nativism and the new nativism of the twenty-first century.

Successful conservation depends on human attitudes, values, and support. Increasingly scientists and managers analyse not only species status and needs, but also the long-term cost, risk, and effectiveness of activities. Socioeconomic costs and benefits are integral to these analyses. Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique provides a case study of conservation integrated with local community needs. Endangered Delta smelt in California exemplify conflicts around water apportionment. Case studies demonstrating the importance of socioeconomic considerations are provided by management of gray wolves and grizzly bears in the United States. The story of sage grouse illustrates how a regional agreement that resulted from many years of collaboration among stakeholders can be nullified by political changes at the national level. The cultural and socioeconomic values and rights of indigenous people play a prominent role in salmon management that can run counter to the interests of hydroelectric companies and other water users. Case studies illustrate how habitat management can be facilitated by participation by non-governmental organizations. Socioeconomic and political consideration also underlie the question of who can take responsibility for managing conservation-reliant species.

A conservation-reliant species is vulnerable to threats that persist; it requires continued management intervention to prevent a decline toward extinction or to maintain a population. The degree of conservation reliance varies over time and among species. Globally, the extent of conservation reliance is accelerating faster than we can provide resources to combat extinctions and promote recovery. A species is recognized as being conservation reliant or emerging from that status based on a general assessment that includes status and threats, the potential for managing the threats, actions taken to manage the threats and the species itself, population monitoring, and monitoring of threats. Species differ in their susceptibility to threats and their potential to respond to management actions, and threats differ in manageability. We use California condor management as a case study for these features of conservation reliance.

Understanding threats and our ability to manage them is the first step in shepherding conservation-reliant species toward sustainability or recovery. This chapter contrasts situations in which a single threat dominates with more complex situations in which multiple threats interact. Interactions among threats raise the likelihood of conservation reliance, as this chapter illustrates in a case study of vultures. Several other case studies illustrate the effectiveness of different legal and management approaches to imperilment and the importance of identifying its root causes. Case studies, including some revolving around dams, also illustrate the complexities that attend socioeconomic drivers of imperilment and differences in the scale and manageability of threats. The chapter also describes several threats such as storms, tsunamis, or volcanic eruptions that are not manageable.

The array of tools for addressing the needs of imperiled and conservation-reliant species is increasing. This chapter provides case studies and examples of the use of translocation and captive breeding for addressing threats, and discuss attributes of receiving sites. Tools for tracking species movements and for remote sensing can efficiently provide large amounts of habitat and species data. Sometimes tools can be used to address common threats such as those created by habitat change or pesticide use, benefitting multiple species. We provide Old World vultures offer a case study. Managing for surrogate, umbrella, indicator, focal, keystone, or pollinator species may assist other species as well. Such roles should be acknowledged in prioritizing conservation activities. Emerging technologies, including genetic tools and artificial intelligence, can help to address imperilment and conservation reliance if ethical issues can be navigated.

Many nations have developed policies and enforced legal approaches for addressing the needs of species at risk of extinction. Generally, however, conservation reliance is not acknowledged legally and is therefore ignored. Increasingly, legal approaches reflect the importance of (1) values in addition to hunting and fishing, (2) wildlife as a shared resource, (3) intrinsic rather than instrumental value, (4) helping species to become self-sustaining, and (5) long-term support for imperiled species. The International Union for the Conservation of Naturehas provided an international standard for recognizing species status. In the United States, the Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act provide a legal framework for species conservation that has been effective (although these acts have also spawned many legal challenges that have consumed the time and resources of stakeholders). The effectiveness of imperiled species laws depends on funding that can vary, leading to varying implementation and enforcement. Conservation reliance is seldom addressed explicitly. Responsibility for implementation may be spread across national, state or province, and more local entities.

Current methods for making decisions about what to fund and at what level are not sufficiently transparent or objective. Acknowledging conservation reliance fosters a realistic approach and outcomes. Prioritization requires an agreed-upon pool of species to consider within a defined area. Defining and ranking prioritization criteria presents a variety of challenges, including accounting for the manageability of threats, species vulnerability, and species genetic and phenotypic traits. Including social and economic factors increases the probability that plans will be implemented. This chapter also considers how factor weightings are derived and means of dealing with uncertainty. Four examples of prioritization processes illustrate the variety of current approaches. Few approaches explicitly consider the long-term demands of conservation reliance. The ethics that underlie conservation triage affect how people undertake prioritization. This book advocates the use of explicit prioritization criteria that include uncertainties and derive from values and interests of diverse stakeholders. Models should acknowledge a wide array of ecological and socioeconomic costs and benefits, probabilities of success, and projected conservation reliance.

Conservation reliance exists along a spectrum from species extinction to species recovery; from requiring intensive to minimal management. This chapter provides case studies of full or partial recovery and explores what made this possible using the Oregon chub, Aleutian cackling goose, southern white rhinoceros, black-capped vireo, and Robbins’ cinquefoil. Toward the other end of the spectrum, continued translocations or releases are required to maintain Oregon silverspot butterflies and Chatham Island black robins. Management is not always successful, however, as seen for Australian woylies. Some species, such as the Guam kingfisher, are extinct in the wild but maintained in zoos. Finally, there are lessons to be learned from species such as the po’ouli, dusky seaside sparrow, and Christmas Island pipistrelle, for which investments were too little or too late. Management of imperiled species is a societal investment and people’s attitudes play an important role in successful recovery. Participation by citizens and non-governmental organizations is particularly important when species are conservation reliant, as the long-term investment required can rarely be sustained otherwise.