Ruth A Morgan

Climate Change and International History: Negotiating science, global change, and environmental justice by Ruth A. Morgan

May 2024, no. 464

In 2020, with Katie Holmes and Andrea Gaynor, Ruth A. Morgan co-authored ‘Doing Environmental History in Urgent Times’, an article which was published in a dedicated ‘In urgent times’ edition of History Australia. With more than 8,800 views since its publication, which coincided with the first Covid lockdowns, the paper has gone on to become that journal’s most read article in its twenty-year lifetime. In it, the co-authors staunchly called for ‘barbed and incendiary histories that hold wrongdoers to account and keep watch over the present’. History writing is an inherently political act, and they stressed – in italics, no less – ‘there is no justice without history’. Four years on, there remains an ever-accelerating and palpable urgency to the work of history writing. With coruscating prose and assiduous scholarship, Climate Change and International History adds its voice to this chorus.

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‘We’ll be going this earth’: an environmental survey

by Lynette Russell, et al. •

October 2019, no. 415

‘We’ll be going this earth’, an environmental survey

To complement the reviews and commentaries in our Environment issue, we invited a number of writers and scholars to nominate a book that will give readers a better appreciation of the environment.

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Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry by Andrew Nikiforuk

by Ruth A. Morgan •

March 2016, no. 379

Ruth A. Morgan reviews 'Slick Water' by Andrew Nikiforuk

In January 2016, Canadian Jessica Ernst had her day in court. Lawyers for the former oil industry insider debated whether she could sue the Alberta energy regulator over her claim that hydraulic fracturing had so badly contaminated her well that the water could be set on fire. This hearing in the Supreme Court of Canada is the latest chapter in Ernst's twelve-year b ...

The Australian Archaeologist's Book of Quotations edited by Mike Smith and Billy Griffiths

by Ruth A. Morgan •

October 2015, no. 375

Ruth A. Morgan reviews 'The Australian Archaeologist's Book of Quotations' edited by Mike Smith and Billy Griffiths

The Australian Archaeologist’s Book of Quotations is a veritable time-traveller’s guide for making sense of a continent, a nation, and its people. The editors, archaeologist Mike Smith and historian Billy Griffiths, have served up a smorgasbord of archaeological appetisers, with a feast of pithy insights into how Australians are coming to terms with ancie ...

The Handbook: Surviving and living with climate change by Jane Rawson and James Whitmore

by Ruth A. Morgan •

October 2015, no. 375

Ruth A. Morgan reviews 'The Handbook' by Jane Rawson and James Whitmore

Although the mantra ‘Don’t panic, but get prepared’ guides Jane Rawson and James Whitmore’s handbook for Surviving and Living with Climate Change, they certainly do not paint a pretty picture of climate-change Australia. The scenarios are alarming: Australia will be hotter, drier in some parts, wetter in others, with more frequent bushfires, floods, a ...

Running Out?: Water in Western Australia by Ruth A. Morgan

by Billy Griffiths •

June-July 2015, no. 372

Billy Griffiths reviews 'Running Out?' by Ruth A. Morgan

Water courses through the history of Western Australia. When historian Ruth A. Morgan began writing Running Out?: Water in Western Australia in 2007, the state was in the grip of drought, climate change was at the fore of public debate, and Perth’s first desalination plant was a year old. The 2005 state election had hinged on the ‘Kimberley–Perth canal ...

The Rise and Fall of Gunns LTD by Quentin Beresford

by Ruth A. Morgan •

May 2015, no. 371

Ruth A. Morgan reviews 'The Rise and Fall of Gunns Ltd' by Quentin Beresford

Since the loss of Lake Pedder, the Apple Isle has been the site of some of Australia’s most famous environmental battles: Franklin River, Farmhouse Creek, Wesley Vale, Styx Valley. In the Tamar Valley near Launceston, tensions continue to simmer over the future of the Gunns Pulp Mill – even in the wake of the collapse of its original proponent, Gunns Ltd, in Sep ...

Flooded Forest and Desert Creek: Ecology and history of the River Red Gum by Matthew J. Colloff

by Ruth A. Morgan •

November 2014, no. 366

Ruth A. Morgan reviews 'Flooded Forest and Desert Creek: Ecology and history of the River Red Gum' by Matthew J. Colloff

In July 2009 I toured the Murray-Darling Basin and northern Queensland with a group of American college professors to see firsthand how the waterways of these regions were faring. By this time, south-eastern Australia had been in drought for nearly a decade, reducing its rivers and creeks to mere trickles. Aboard the MV Kingfisher, we explored the wetlands of the Barmah Choke, the narrowest section of the River Murray, where thirsty River Red Gums stood starkly exposed along its banks. Years without flood, as Chris Hammer observed in The River: A Journey through the Murray–Darling Basin (2011), was changing the Barmah ‘from a wetland to a woodland’. But the drought did break, eventually: twelve months after my visit the river flooded and the inundation of the region’s floodplains brought relief to the many species, human and non-human, for whom the Murray is their lifeblood.

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