Climate and Human History

My thoughts tonight turn to climate change, as often they do. My doctoral dissertation will examine the impact of the Little Ice Age on Dutch society, discerning whether the sudden, prolonged cooling of our planet around 1300 had any part to play in the simultaneous rise to power of Holland in the low countries - and eventually the world. The bigger questions are obvious: how do humans respond to climate change? How does - and did - such changeimpact history? What lessons can we draw - if any?

On a smaller level the questions are just as interesting . . . and significantly more innovative. Did the Little Ice Age have a greater - or, at least, more negative - impact on societies competing with Holland for regional dominance? Did lower sea levels facillitate efforts at land reclamation in the Netherlands? Did they improve access to peat, the driving energy source behind the Dutch Golden Age (and capitalist economy) of the 17th Century? Did increasingly ferocious storms - and the combined response they necessitated - serve as catalyst for the uniquely egalitarian nature of contemporary Dutch society?

Such a pronounced impact would not be unusual given the impact of the Little Ice Age elsewhere in Europe. After all, the Vikings were virtually extinguished as a major European power by the onset of climatological cooling. Greenland was obviously a lost cause (and the suffering there was truly apalling - "chilling," as an unfortunate, unpleasant former colleague would awkwardly announce). Iceland was surrounded by pack ice from the arctic, isolated from the rest of the Viking world. Of course, Viking colonization attempts further to the West were scarcely realistic now. More importantly, Sweden and Norway lost half their population - Denmark a third.

But the consequences were as pronounced a bit farther to the south. In the wake of period of great prosperity Scotland was particularly affected when cold winds first blew from the North; harvests failed beginning in the fourteenth century, farms in higher elevations were simply abandoned, and before long unrest swept across the country. In a cold, dry climate Scotland was increasingly eclipsed by England, which, while gripped by a climate so frigid that the Thames froze over during winter, nonetheless escaped devastation on the same scale. A union of the Scottish and English parliaments was arguably rendered inevitable . . . and it is no coincidence that it followed in the wake of the coldest period in the history of the Little Ice Age.

What consequences, then, across the channel? Strangely, little has been written about the cooling climate's impact on the Low Countries, a region undergoing tremendous change and uniquely sensitive to climatological fluctuations.

Here's another interesting caveat: during the "Little Ice Age" - the most significant cooling event to afflict our planet in 10,000 years - the world's average temperature dipped by 1-2 Celsius.

In 2007 the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change summarized the belief of more than 2500 scientists from 150 countries: the Earth’s average temperature will rise by at least 1 Celsius by 2100. Scientists described in vivid terms the catastrophic and apparently inevitable results of such a deceptively small increase, warning of flooding, drought and intensified storms.

Perched on a rollercoaster just beginning its descent, that's what we worry about today - sweeping changes in the shape and nature of our planet driven by a rise of just one or two celsius. But it's happened before, with an impact lessened only by the diminished scale of humanity's presence on Earth . . . and, of course, the absence of a risk for runaway, out of control warming through the greenhouse effect.

Still, the point is simple: what is to come has happened before. That's what makes this project so interesting. If the world is undergoing potentially catastrophic climate change, shouldn't we examine those who thrived when it happened the last time? Thrived, it must be said, by creating an expansive, capitalist economy nearly two centuries before the Industrial Revolution?

It should be interesting. At least . . . as interesting as such research can be.