Why a Green Museum?

'For most of us, even the committed activist, the Green movement has no history...'. So said Derek Wall, a historian and prominent member of the UK Green Party, back in 1994. Wall went on to disprove this statement with a book showing environmentalism has a centuries-old heritage.

Spin on another 14 years, and a lot more green history has passed under the bridge. A historian writing from the vantage point of the twenty-second century will look back on the Noughties as the time not merely of iPods, Heather Mills, and the Arctic Monkeys, but also the time when the world woke up to climate change.

So why study the history of environmentalism? Firstly, because it's one of the most important social movements to emerge from the modern era, with a rich story to tell and a cast of characters as colourful as they are radical. Secondly - and more importantly - because I believe that studying the history of green politics can offer some important lessons for the present. The environmental movement is, of course, alive and kicking - very far from being consigned to a museum. Yet without a museum to house its history, we risk forgetting where it's come from, what it's achieved, and where it's previously failed.

So this blog will sometimes indulge in history pure and simple - recounting stories and explaining events: from the decline of the Dodo to the rise of Greenpeace, via a survey of world food crises, what links tofu and Soylent Green, and the mysterious Men of the Trees. There will also always be plenty of pictures. But it won't merely be a cabinet of old curiosities. The bulk of my posts will take current events and try to place them in their historic context, or draw relevant lessons from history. Hell - we might even learn something from our past mistakes.

Enjoy - and welcome to the Green Museum.