Man
and Nature or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human History by
George P. Marsh published
1864.
FIVE
STARS
America's
first environmentalist, George P. Marsh's encyclopedia sized report
on the planets status holds answers to human impact. This timely old
book critically looks at alterations to the environment over the
entire span of mankind's involvement.. Consequences of atmospheric,
oceanic, topographic, and even socially are examined in great detail
from contrasting views using documented sources.
Though
the book is huge in scope it approaches each subject with
scientifically minded objectivity. The book impacted the mindset of
many powerful thinkers who took Marsh's message to heart.
The
battle of environmentalism versus man's insatiable drive to exploit
every earthly resource beyond extinction and total plunder is
balanced on a tipping scale favoring the greedy money hungry.
The
book is in the public domain and downloadable for free from
Amazon.com and Project Gutenberg.
Excerpts:
"Wherever he plants his foot,
the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. The proportions and
accommodations which insured the stability of existing arrangements
are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal species are
extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign origin, spontaneous
production is forbidden or restricted, and the face of the earth is
either laid bare or covered with a new and reluctant growth of
vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal life. These
intentional changes and substitutions constitute, indeed, great
revolutions; but vast as is their magnitude and importance, they are,
as we shall see, insignificant”
“Since
the invention of gunpowder, some quadrupeds have completely
disappeared from many European and Asiatic countries where they were
formerly numerous. The last wolf was killed in Great Britain two
hundred years ago, and the bear was extirpated from that island still
earlier. The British wild ox exists only in a few English and
Scottish parks, while in Irish bogs, of no great apparent antiquity,
are found antlers which testify to the former existence of a stag
much larger than any extant European species.”
“If
man is destined to inhabit the earth much longer,
and to advance in natural knowledge with the rapidity which has
marked his progress in physical science for the last two or three
centuries, he will learn to put a wiser estimate on the works of
creation, and will derive not only great instruction from studying
the ways of nature in her obscurest, humblest walks, but great
material advantage from stimulating her productive energies in
provinces of her empire hitherto regarded as forever inaccessible,
utterly barren.”
About
George P. Marsh (from Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Perkins_Marsh
George
Perkins Marsh
(March 15, 1801 – July 23, 1882), an American diplomat
and
philologist,
is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and the
precursor to the sustainability concept,although "conservationist"
would be more accurate. The Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller
National Historical Park in Vermont takes its name, in part, from
Marsh.
