Title:
The original climate crisis – how the little ice age devastated early modern Europe
Authors:
Ariel Hessayon
Reader in Early Modern History, Goldsmiths, University of London
&
Dan Taylor
Lecturer in Social and Political Thought, The Open University
Published:
The Conversation, 7 March 2022
From the article:
Just as the UK was recovering from storms Eunice and Franklin, scientists of UN’s the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a landmark report warning of a future with spiralling weather extremes, fiercer storms, flash flooding and wildfires. This isn’t the first time that Britain has experienced drastic climate change, however. By the 16th and 17th centuries, northern Europe had left its medieval warm period and was languishing in what is sometimes called the little ice age.