Page 157 - Environment: The Science Behind the Stories

must be considered sinful to degrade that creation. Indeed, it
must be seen as one’s duty to act as a responsible steward of
the world in which we live.

The industrial revolution inspired reaction
As industrialization spread in the 19th century, it amplified
human impacts on the environment. In this period of social
and economic transformation, agricultural economies became
industrial ones, machines enhanced or replaced human and
animal labor, and many people moved from farms to cities.
Population rose dramatically, consumption of natural resources
accelerated, and pollution intensified as we burned coal to fuel
railroads, steamships, ironworks, and factories.
Some writers of the time drew attention to the drawbacks
of industrialization. British critic John Ruskin called cities
“little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven
of venomous smokes and smells.” Ruskin worried that while
people prized the material benefits that nature provided, they FIguRE 6.4 A pioneering advocate of the preservation ethic,
no longer appreciated its spiritual and aesthetic benefits. Moti- John Muir helped establish the Sierra Club, a leading
vated by such concerns, a number of citizens’ groups sprang environmental organization. Here Muir (right) is shown with
up in 19th-century England, forerunners of today’s environ- President Theodore Roosevelt in Yosemite National Park in
mental organizations. 1903. After this wilderness camping trip with Muir, the president
In the United States during the 1840s, a philosophical expanded protection of areas in the Sierra Nevada.
movement called transcendentalism flourished, espoused
in New England by philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and happiness (an anthropocentrist argument based on instrumen-
Henry David Thoreau and by poet Walt Whitman. The tran- tal value). “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread,” he
scendentalists viewed nature as a direct manifestation of the wrote, “Places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal
divine, emphasizing the soul’s oneness with nature and God. and give strength to body and soul alike.”
Like Ruskin, the transcendentalists objected to an attraction to Some of the factors that motivated Muir also inspired
material things, and they promoted a holistic view of nature in Gifford Pinchot (1865–1946), the first professionally trained
which natural entities were symbols or messengers of deeper American forester (FIguRE 6.5). Pinchot founded what would
truths. Although Thoreau viewed nature as divine, he also become the U.S. Forest Service and served as its chief in
observed the natural world closely and came to understand it in President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration. Like Muir,
the manner of a scientist; indeed, he can be considered one of Pinchot opposed the deforestation and unregulated economic
the first ecologists. His book Walden, in which he recorded his development that occurred during their lifetimes. However,
observations and thoughts while living at Walden Pond away Pinchot took a more anthropocentric view of how and why
from the bustle of urban Massachusetts, remains a classic of we should value nature. He espoused the conservation ethic,
American literature. which holds that people should put natural resources to use

Conservation and preservation arose
with the 20th century

One admirer of Emerson and Thoreau was John Muir (1838–1914),
a Scottish immigrant to the United States who made Califor-
nia’s Yosemite Valley his wilderness home. Although Muir
chose to live in isolation in his beloved Sierra Nevada for long
stretches of time, he also became politically active and won
fame as a tireless advocate for the preservation of wilderness
(FIguRE 6.4).
Muir was motivated by the rapid deforestation and envi-
ronmental degradation he witnessed throughout North America
and by his belief that the natural world should be treated with
the same respect that we give to cathedrals. Today he is associ-
ated with the preservation ethic, which holds that we should FIguRE 6.5 Gifford Pinchot, the first chief of what would
protect the natural environment in a pristine, unaltered state. become the U.S. Forest Service, was a leading proponent
Muir argued that nature deserved protection for its own sake of the conservation ethic. This ethic holds that people should
(an ecocentrist argument resting on the notion of intrinsic use natural resources in ways that ensure the greatest good for the
156 value), but he also maintained that nature promoted human greatest number for the longest time.

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