Indeed. For most people the world was the world outside their doorstep, the world they encountered and lived in. Place. Even modern environmentalists thought a

Indeed. For most people the world was the world outside their doorstep, the world they encountered and lived in. Place. Even modern environmentalists thought and acted locally until very recently. Now "the world" can only mean the entire planet as a a whole. It's a frame of reference that most people have never really had. It's only in modern times (space race) that we started to think of the planet as a place and within those times it's only in very recent times when we have started to think of taking care of this planet.