Towards a Better Understanding of the Societal Impacts of Climate Change

---

In the 19th episode of Climate History, co-hosts Dagomar Degroot and Emma Moesswilde discuss their work on a major article in the journal Nature. The article coins a new term – the “History of Climate and Society” (HCS) – to refer to the truly interdisciplinary study of the past impacts of climate change on human populations. It offers a detailed critique of the field as it has been pursued to date, presents a new research framework for HCS scholars, and shows how the application of that framework can permit new scholarship into the resilience and adaptability of populations that faced the modest, pre-industrial climate changes of the past 2,000 years. It also identifies five “pathways” that allowed populations to endure and even exploit these changes - pathways from which we might learn today.
​
Dagomar Degroot, lead author of the study, explains how he assembled the team responsible for the article, and details the article's most important findings about the past. He describes how HCS studies can move forward from here - and reveals what this scholarship can tell us about our future on a warming planet. 

To listen to this episode, click here to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes. If you don't have iTunes, you can still listen by following us on SoundCloud or Spotify. ​