Richard White
Mistakes We Should Stop Making: How Past Policies Have Shaped Emerging Issues
Thursday, September 29, 2005, 12:30 PM
Richard White is widely regarded as one of the nation's leading
scholars in three related fields: the American West, Native American
history, and environmental history. Professor White came to
Stanford in 1998 and is the author of five books, including The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires and Republic in the Great Lakes Region, 1750-1815,
which was named a finalist for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize. Among
other honors, he is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation fellowship.Americans are notoriously a people who live in the present and the future. The past, particularly when it is unpleasant, is something we want to put behind us. Global warming, ozone holes, the depletion of fisheries, the pollution of waters, soil exhaustion, declining biodiversity and other environmental problems are not recent phenomena. They are the product of historical processes of considerable duration: in some cases a half century, in other cases a century, and in still other cases, even further back in the history of humanity. Their history seems pertinent to our future.
What is equally true and even more disquieting is that many of the grave problems of our future arose not during a period of environmental neglect but, at least in the United States, during a century of rising environmental concern and regulation. In many ways, the United States, a country with a long record of environmental legislation and management, has been one of the greatest contributors to current global environmental problems. More is involved than a lack of research or will. In some cases solutions have become problems. Ignoring the relevance of this legacy will be disastrous for any serious attempt to deal with our current and emerging environmental problems.
BRIEF SUMMARY
Using Hurricane Katrina as a starting point, White pointed out how historical barriers are like chemical reactions: some processes are hard to reverse. White emphasized the importance of looking for policy “choke points.” His examples: the federal highway plan has led to sprawl and federal disaster insurance has led to irresponsible building.
