What is Environmental Writing?

[Based on a talk given as part of the Midday Musing Discussion Series sponsored by the UNO English Department, Wednesday, October 18, 2017]

Let me first establish, like a Montana rancher, the boundaries of this talk with some verbal fencing.  Today, I’m going to be talking about environmental writing in the United States.  Certainly, there has been, is, and will be, fine environmental writing by writers from all over the world. But this is a four-year college, so we only have so much time.  I have to establish limits.  Most—but not all—of the books and writers I’ll discuss today will be from this, and the previous, century. 

So, what is environmental writing?

I think you would be hard pressed to find a common definition—that is, one that would instantly come to everyone’s mind when you ask the question.  Wags would be tempted to reply, “Well, it’s writing about the environment,” and they wouldn’t be wrong.  Up to a point.  And, in fact, this is what Bill McKibben, the great and tireless advocate for the well-being of our earth, says.  In the introduction to American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, the anthology that he edited, he writes, “As defined broadly by the pieces in this book, it [environmental writing] takes as its subject the collision between people and the rest of the world, and asks searching questions about that collision: Is it necessary?  What are its effects? Might there be a better way?”

Henry David Thoreau