environment

Changing attitudes to the natural world

When Julius Caesar (100–44 BC) became emperor of Rome, in 47 BC, traffic congestion was one of

the pressing domestic problems he faced. He solved it by banning wheeled traffic from the centre of

Rome during daytime, with the predictable result that Romans were kept awake at night by the

incessant rumbling of iron-shod wheels over cobblestones. Nevertheless, Claudius (10 BC-AD 54,

reigned from 41) later extended the law to all the important towns of Italy, Marcus Aurelius (AD

121–80, reigned from 161) made it apply to every town in the empire, and Hadrian (AD 76–138,

reigned from 117) tightened it by restricting the number of vehicles allowed to enter Rome even at

night (MUMFORD, 1961). The problem then, as now, was that a high population density generates

a high volume of traffic and no one considered the possibility of designing towns with lower population

and housing densities, as an alternative to building more and bigger roads.

If environmental science has a long history, so do the environmental problems that concern us today.

We tend to imagine that urban air pollution is a recent phenomenon, dating mainly from the period

of rapid industrialization in Europe and North America that began in the late eighteenth century. Yet

in 1306 a London manufacturer was tried and executed for disobeying a law forbidding the burning

of coal in the city, and the first legislation aimed at reducing air pollution by curbing smoke emissions

was enacted by Edward I in 1273. The early efforts were not particularly successful and they dealt

only with smoke from the high-sulphur coal Londoners were importing by ship from north-east

England and which was, therefore, known as ‘sea coal’. A wide variety of industries contributed to

the smells and dust and poured their effluents into the nearest river. The first attempts to reduce pollution of the Thames date from the reign of Richard II (1367–1400, reigned from 1377). It was

because of the smoke, however, that Elizabeth I refused to enter the city in 1578, and by 1700 the

pollution was causing serious damage by killing vegetation, corrod-ing buildings, and ruining clothes

and soft furnishings in every town of any size (THOMAS, 1983). Indeed, the pall of smoke hanging

over them was often the first indication approaching travellers had of towns.

Filthy it may have been, but ‘sea coal’ was convenient. It was a substitute for charcoal rather than

wood, because of the high temperature at which it burned, and it was probably easier to obtain. If its

use were to be curtailed, either manufacturing would suffer, with a consequent reduction in employment

and prosperity, or charcoal would be used instead, in which case pollution might have been little

reduced overall. Environmental protection always involves compromise between conflicting needs.

Much of the primary forest that once covered most of lowland Britain, which Oliver Rackham,

possibly the leading authority on the history of British woodland, has called the ‘wildwood’,

had been cleared by the time of the Norman invasion, in 1066, mainly to provide land on which

to grow crops. It did not disappear, as some have suggested, to provide fuel for eighteenthcentury iron foundries, or to supply timber to build ships. Paradoxically, the iron foundries

probably increased the area of woodland, by relying for fuel on managed coppice from sources

close at hand, and reports of a shortage of timber for shipbuilding had less to do with a lack of

suitable trees than with the low prices the British Admiralty was prepared to pay (ALLABY,

1986, p. 110).

As early as the seventh century there were laws restricting the felling of trees and in royal forests a

fence was erected around the stump of a felled tree to allow regeneration (ALLABY, 1986, p. 198).