Environmental historian John McNeill will summarize the broad outlines and driving forces of environmental change in the industrial era, and explore the controversies surrounding what it might mean. Should we consider that the earth has entered a new epoch in its history? McNeill, currently at Georgetown University, has held two Fulbright awards, fellowships from Guggenheim, MacArthur, and the Woodrow Wilson Center. His books include “Something New Under the Sun” (2000), listed by the London Times among the 10 best science books ever written (despite not being a science book); “The Human Web” (2003); and “Mosquito Empires” (2010), which won the Beveridge Prize. In 2010 he was awarded the Toynbee Prize for “academic and public contributions to humanity,” and in 2018 the Heineken Award for History from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. McNeill is past president of the American Society for Environmental History and was recently elected president of the American Historical Association for 2019.