Speaker, he is a certified instructor. When you ask those questions, make sure they have a question mark at the end of them. , please help me welcome him. [applause] good evening. I am thrilled to be here and happy you could join me. I will talk about my current research, a Global Environmental history of the First World War. I am interested in Energy Geopolitics that link the battle lines on the home fronts with agricultural and industry in ways that fundamentally shaped the 20th century. So i will talk about the main battlefield many of us are familiar with, then hop, skip, and jump around the globe to point out areas that had an incredibly profound Environmental Impact. , few human endeavors have altered the Natural World as and as agriculture industry warfare. Together inse came ways that were incredibly destructive. War, theyne mentions think battlefields, and soldiers did change environment on every battlefront. Military planners took the environment into account, considering climate and terrain. Soldiers often talk about battling it concealments. , we seeestern front western soldiers dealing with the mud. If you have ever read all quiet on the western front, you know the battle against rats, disease. Soldiers group of dealing with that mesopotamian sun. That furnacelike setting made for diseases, you name it, tuberculosis, the plague. There was something call the baghdad boyles. It sounds awful. See englishwe soldiers. They are in africa. Disease, thenting jungle setting, but also contending with wild animal attacks, lions and elephants mainly. There was fighting happening in the alps, frostbite, avalanches, hypothermia, isolation, and not surprising, depression, something most soldiers had to contend with. Armies altered ecosystems on every front. In many ways that warfare accelerated environmental changes that had begun in the previous century. Let me give you a few examples. Formost pressing problem soldiers fighting in mesopotamia was water. , thatthe environment probably seems obvious. Troops complained about an over abundance of water. The marshlands and ponds would flood during the spring snow from the highlands and asia minor with swell the rivers and lakes which would turn mesopotamia into a morass. Local civilians had traditionally piled loose dirt a badthe banks, but in flood, those were not effective, so soldiers alter the land with ,renches, protective dams change water flows, and redirected the course of rivers. The mobilization of armies in the alps intensified industrialization, with a massive expansion of roads, railways, and a electricity, like here. Africala warfare in expanded infrastructure with roads and railways, but nowhere was the concentration of forces so great as on the western front, where the stalemate brought ecological of people. Here are french soldiers struggling across no mans land. Scenes like this letter devastation ruined landscapes pitted and cracked with craters and trenches and quickly became s metaphor for the great war waist. Opposing forces fired over one billion shells, and now it formed a substratum of soil, slowly making their way back to surface. It is typical for farmers to unearth these relics, many of which are still dangerous, still explosive. Themwill collect them, set by the side of the road, and then Government Agencies back him up. With someance to meet over the summer who took me to the collection depot. Here is some of the stuff they recover over the course of a year. It is incredible. They first have to identify what. Ort of shell, chemical, gas is it still alive . We will come back to that. Dont look. These hard minutes haunt the land, may and murder. Caught inly bombs tractor plows will explode, claiming more victims of the war. Ground in somehe regions and authorities have designated these lands red zones, too dangerous for cultivation, tourism, or human habitation. We can see traces of this war when we examined the aerial photographs and the way in which crops grow. As theyerent soil is are recovered, left to these growing patterns you can trace out where trenches were. Here are a few inches of this, taking from the flanders field museum. That is pretty incredible. Destruction has shaped our view of the ecological impact. Lines, majoront damage to nature on the battlefield was shortlived. Here is a picture of a famous path from france into belgium. It was memorialized with this painting. Today, this is what we would see. Greater environmental change occurred behind the lines. Mostands that suffer the stood pretty far from the fighting. We can think of armies as biological entities which depended on a military ecology of energy. To maintain the biological welfare of soldiers, states commandeered resources, expanding the footprint. Coal was a principal source of Industrial Energy in 1914. Be call was there would shortages. Shortages,otential. Hey rationed it this is a british pamphlet instructing citizens. ,dont burn coal burn wood instead. There is a massive expansion of timber extraction, and deforestation accelerated in an uneven fashion. Britain cut down nearly. Alf of its forests the opening of the panama canal inered the cost of imports British Columbia and the u. S. Became leading timber exporters. His is from British Columbia french and german timber fared well. Both countries had long institutionalized for street practices, and most of the diverted to been the army. The german sibley took trees from other countries. We see how similar it looks to these wartorn regions all kinds of propaganda encouraging extraction since manpower had archetypaled, and male profession, the lumberjack, now had a gender identity switch. This is an image from the Womans Land Army in Great Britain, where women were sent out to chop down trees. The u. S. Established the forced Street Forest ry corps. Timber was crucial. You needed it for everything. This is accelerating the deforestation. Generals when they return from the western front to the southeastern United States or the northwest and saw these clearcut patches, it reminded him of the western front. The discussion foris the need for for Street Forestry policy to create Sustainable Forestry practices in the name of national security. Warprogression of the accentuated the importance of it. It was the u. S. And mexico that supplied more than 80 of the worlds petroleum, most out of california, but a fair amount along the veracruz coast in mexico. That is where i will focus. To drill there, companies had to move mangroves, draining swamps along the coast. They would dig these deep pits to hold the petroleum once it was pumped out, and it disturb the soil in the way we saw with schelling on the western front. Was contained at high levels with Hydrogen Sulfide at high to matures. It was common for these blazes and explosions to happen that would devastate land, some of which have not recovered. In Great Britain, there is concern on foreign oil, u. S. Oil , and it was driving british ambitions in mesopotamia. One of the reasons we saw british troops in the deserts, in provinces of the ottoman empire, and sound familiar today, were because the prudish wanted to control the newly discovered oil fields in that region. Coal, oil, but the Crucial Energy resource was food, food scarcity was a defining feature of the war. Countries blockaded by the british and french navies, facedy, austria, hungary, alarming energy deficits that required authoritarian regulations. At all surprising that germany lost, what is shocking it sustained 1. 7 million soldiers on multiple fronts for over four years as long as it did. Theanys defeat reveals ecological constraints of waging war. Food,s imported 25 of dairy, meat, much of the fodder came from russia, argentina, the u. S. And high agriculture yields relied on chilean nitrates for fertilizer. Blockade andish the poor domestic harvest is, german Agricultural Production plummeted. There is this massive attempt to mobilize food. This is a german placard. It says hold out. Potato with a strangely human face. Desperate to increase Agricultural Production, germans plowed church yards, school grounds, forest blades, even the soccer fields, which was telling. German soccer clubs went crazy. Oh no, not the soccer fields. Think of the children. It didnt work. Exacerbated class tensions in cities where Workers Councils complain the parks and socalled Luxury Gardens in the more affluent neighborhoods were not being used for cultivation. The response was those were two shady to grow anything. The German Government attempted to arbitrate inequalities with ration cards and price controls. Didnt work. Just created a vibrant black market. Control every phase of Agricultural Production, but often bureaucratic clumsiness or shortsighted policies resulted in food shortages. Here is an example. State officials determined gluttonous pigs were competing with humans for grain. The government decreed the great pig massacre, claiming over 9 million victims. What they did is produce a momentary glut of pork. Sausage every night, but did nothing to alleviate the grain shortage. Is what thental death of those pigs did to the ecology. Takes were not only consumers of fodder, the great producers of fertilizer. Their departure had dire longterm consequences. Proved ineffective in the face of disaster. 1915, a locust plague of biblical proportions exacerbated a famine in greater syria. All those dots are locusts. They stripped the vineyards, croplands, and orchards. Food markets were bare. The situationre was. Here is a before and after picture. A nice solid tree, and the next day. Eatingresorted to roasted locusts, then burning the husks to heat their home on vince ovens. Rather than enforce food rationing, the u. S. Food administrator, herbert hoover, encouraged citizens to eat less, with the slogan, food will win the war. This is one of many propaganda posters catering towards recent immigrants. Waste nothing. It actually worked. There was a 15 reduction in domestic food consumption. The government would issue all kinds of pamphlets encouraging people to say food. One encourage them to dry food. They would send pamphlets to homeowners, here is how you can drive vegetables, recipes for turning something delightful, like dried carrots, into something delicious. The brochures conceded that some flavor might be lost, but so much remains. The constant bombardment of literature suggests most people were not being fooled by this. They were not keen on dried dishes, but did practice other forms of selfrestraint. Uber cold on patriotic americans to participate in meatless s wednesdays,eatles and it worked. All kinds of pamphlets like this, a way to save, so this is withots fruit trees reserves. There is wasted fruit, rotted fruit, not patriotic. A lot of this is directed towards housewives, towards producers, saving that food. Or how to prepare your meals. There was the creation of a number of agencies during this war to regulate or somehow direct these resources. One was the National War Garden commission. We see these sorts of commissions in most belligerent countries, the cultivation of home gardens anywhere you can come backyards, vacant lots, school grounds. Cultivation of nearly 3 million gardens, these numbers may be inflated, but was still telling, nearly 25 of american households had what were popularly cold war gardens. We see schoolchildren during recess put those kids to work eas. Ting p you can grow food. See them plowing up the fields. You know the war has come home. The propaganda is fantastic. Pumpkins, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, carrots charging over the top. The farmer has become a soldier. Not a rifle, but a tool. Will you have a part in victory . I point this out because even as expandedassively patterns of exploitation, it also set standards for conservation. Incentives for mass production were large. You had to feed these massive industrialized armies. To do that, the government guaranteed prices of over two dollars a bushel for wheat for the duration of the war. That is high. Adequate rainfall, soaring bonanza farms on the american and canadian prairies. Optimistic farmers borrowed heavily, taking out second mortgages on their farm to break sod on marginal lands to reap profits. Most of this is done across prairies, suited for gasdriven tractors, plows, and combines. Wheat farming was so lucrative that financial profits outweighed the environmental costs, but what we find is the environmental and economic consequences that distorted Agricultural Production were severe. Those fields we sell devastated on the western front, predominantly farming lands, we know they recovered productivity quickly, within a few years after the armistice those yields approach prewar levels. That meant european demand for American Produce evaporated. Drought in the 1920s, grain prices plummeted over 50 between 1920 and 1921, creating serious liquidity problems for those indebted farmers. It left hundreds of thousands destitute, and foreclosure rates hit record numbers. The like of which we have not seen since. Ok. I will take you somewhere else now. The situation was even worse in africa. Deficits andenergy massive population displacement created famine conditions. Most of the fighting in africa took place in germany. There was fighting elsewhere, but those were pretty much done by 1915. Here it lasted the entire time and was mostly guerrilla fighting. Pack animals in that region fell prey by the fly that from a transferred the parasite that causes sleeping sickness. Meant European Forces relied on Energy Bodies as energy reserves. Both sides carried out their campaigns on the backs of africans. Millions were mobilized for this. Recruited one million porters from populations across subsaharan africa. Pursuing the germans required two or three african carriers for british soldiers. They often view their african acruits or conscripts as tactical advantage. What we find is there was a high death rate among african recruits, much higher than for british or german soldiers. Food shortages is one explanation for this disparity. Laborers received less than 1000 calories per day. Food shortages plagued most of the african continent during the war. Thousands of hungry soldiers outstripped local supply. Soaring prices compounded struggles to obtain limited provisions. Guerrilla warfare created negative feedback loops, troops that would take cattle, and that allowed for tsetse fly expansion, pushing the flies into the bush, lowered the incidences of sleeping sickness, then the bush expanded and it had the opposite effect. Reduction of livestock correlated to an increase in animal attacks on humans. Cows were easy prey for old, lazy lions. That the lions were looking for people instead. People would desert villages for safer places, allowing the bush tsetsever and those numbers to swell. There were laws that restricted the sale of firearms and ammunition, meaning if were around to prevent animals from ravishing plantations with impunity. That population displacement in africa meant ecological dislocation. Find another image, further into the belgian congo with african porters. I will skip across the atlantic to latin america. Hardly anyone thinks about latin itrica during this war, but played a pivotal role. They nourished and fueled european armies throughout the war, like mexico or argentina or chile. That role was in Sodium Nitrate in chile. Overhad a near monopoly trade. It was essential for fertilizer and a major constituent of twoosives, thus served vital needs of any belligerent country. Acceleratedd is it the processes that would exhaust their nitrate deposits. It also revealed the systemic weaknesses in relations between labor and capital. s main trading partner was germany, so it plummeted chile into severe depression. The nitrate districts were the hardest hit. There was little other than mining nitrate in the desert. Workers were sent south to the agricultural lands, but their arrival exacerbated already dire conditions. Iny with economic recovery 1915 and the continued reliance preventeds total mayhem. At the same time, scientists in germany had developed a process fixation which doomed chiles nitrate industry. There we go. Some nitrate mining. Is area, it was one of the. 0 wealthiest countries it reinforces changes happening on that land. Flyt britain, for example, the early 20 century, imports were 40 of domestic consumption, 80 out of argentina. Relationships with Great Britain was viewed in a negative light, labeled as part of Great Britains socalled informal empire. The south american economies were entirely dependent on european whims. We switch that a little bit in view argentina in this larger Transatlantic Energy exchange. It is a different view. Argentina a strategic advantage. Even though Great Britain had to rely on argentina during the war, argentina decided to get coal from the u. S. Instead of Great Britain. Great britainh waso as dependent on argentinames as argentina was reliant on Great Britain for coal, so these exchanges created mutually dependent networks the war directed enforced, or at times balance. The last place is cuba today. Cuba was part of the war effort. It was an importer of food stocks. , mostly sugarrops and tobacco, the mainstays of the cuban economy. , thert of the war effort government sought to list the help of the sugar plantations, who then could use some of their land to allow tenant farmers to plant food crops. The european sugar beat production raise sugar prices, which drove plantation expansion , often at the expense of food crops. The cuban government is issuing all these proclamations to people, tried to eat beans and bananas, not so much wheat, but sugarcane plantations meant well. For many cubans, they also signif