1950's is when the environmental destruction started

[sandnsea]

Eisenhower. Please stop saying Republicans were ever good on the environment. We are HELPING THEM get branded as the rational conservationists, while Democrats get branded as the treehugging left.

"The Forest Service became a target of these organizations because the agency had changed its practices in the preceding decades, shifting to large timber sales." As late as the beginning of World War II (1941), less than 2 percent of the Nation's wood was derived from Forest Service timber sales" (Steen 1983:247). By deciding to allow large-volume timber sales on national forests, especially in the Pacific Northwest, the agency set in motion a series of related events: forestry schools started training thousands of new foresters as the primary job market for foresters—the Forest Service—expanded its workforce; and an extensive network of roads was constructed to open the national forests to development, many of them replacing old trails. "During the 1950's (annual) timber harvests almost tripled, going from about 3 billion board feet in 1950 to almost 9 billion at the end of the decade" (Roth and Harmon 1989)."

http://www.fs.fed.us/global/wsnew/fs_history/issue23.doc

[Rex]

1. I would say since the Industrial Revolution, it accelerated in the 1950s

Reagan pretty much killed the EPA in the 1980s and now Dubya seems hellbent on climate change. At any cost.

[SammyWinstonJack]

25. Agree! nt.

[panader0]

2. Great show on Rachel Carson of "Silent Spring" yesterday on CBS

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. It started long before that.

Pollution was at its worst in the fifties/sixties. At least in the U.S.

[slackmaster]

4. Hydraulic mining started in the 1860s

That has permemently altered riparian environments, shifted waterways, and denuded huge areas of forest.

[mike_c]

5. opening the national forests was largely a response to prior exploitation...

...of private timberlands and other public land in the eastern U.S. For example, the great virgin longleaf pine forests were stripped from the southeastern coastal plain around the turn of the century, fifty years before the events you describe. Most of the private old growth timber was exhausted east of the Rockies by the 1950s. Hell, east of the Cascades.

At the same time, attitudes in forestry regarded those big volume stands as unproductive, i.e. slow-growing, and held that forest health was improved by cutting them down to make way for new growth. Funny how that suited the needs of the timber industry so well....

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

10. Well, sure, when he wasn't shooting elephants and rhinos.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. Weird...

I thought I was replying to the Teddy Roosevelt post.

[sandnsea]

14. Large scale destruction started in the 50's

Destruction of federal lands in addition to private lands. The path to rivers on fire. You know full well that we've lost 100 times more redwoods since the 50's than we did before that.

Way for everybody to completely miss the point in order to argue. Brother. :eyes:

[mike_c]

24. sorry you missunderstood-- I agree with you completely about the NFs....

I just wanted to fill in some of the historical context. This is pretty close to my professional training. Anyway, my comments were not intended as argument with your OP.

[sandnsea]

33. It's true of most industries

Isolated practices became national and the destruction followed. Before that, we had areas of impact, now we've got a global environmental crisis. The two can't be compared and Republicans have never been willing to really lead to change the business practices that cause it. We've got to stop handing issues over to them. I'd much rather have a Green Party and a Dem Party and every time we say something nice about Republicans, we make that much less likely to happen.

[Double T]

6. Environmental destruction began as early as 1750 with the destruction.......

of the Bison herds. It has been environmentally downhill ever since.

[sandnsea]

One animal

We've been wiping out droves during the end of the last century. Without the endangered species act, we'd have no animals left and that would have happened since the 50's.

Republicans ARE NOT good on the environment. They have to be forced, by threat of being voted out of office, to do every single thing they've ever done.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. The passenger pigeon, the dodo, the carolina parakeet...

Hell, look what 19th century whaling did.

It's a lot more than one animal.

[Thothmes]

70. one animal

Don't forget the wooly mammoth and the Irish Elk. We got them too.

[hughee99]

7. Teddy Roosevelt was pretty good on the environment, IMHO...

though he may have been the last one, and environmental destruction started long before 1950.

[sandnsea]

20. Lincoln was pretty good on human rights

Although he may have been the last one and was ridiculed mercilessly for his concern for regular Americans.

Animals create trails which impact the environment. Humans impact the environment negatively too, in a variety of ways. That's different than the destruction that has taken place since the 50's.

[hughee99]

29. Even before the 1950's

there was strip mining, factories pouring dangerous chemicals into the air, rivers and lakes, toxic landfills (including Love Canal which was a chemical waste dump site from the 20's until 1952), even clear cutting has been around for hundreds of years. If your referring specifically to forestry, the 1950's was absolutely a turning point in that area, but as for the environment in general, the problems go back much further.

[sandnsea]

32. And who did that?

:shrug:

Just because a Republican was forced to sign legislation does not mean they are good on the environment.

Where we are today happened largely since the 50's. The pollutants are more dangerous and in more areas of the country. They're everywhere. That was not true 100 years ago and it's stunning to me that anybody would try to argue that they were.

[hughee99]

35. What legislation?

The only repuke I've referenced so far was Teddy Roosevelt, and I don't remember him being FORCED to sign the policies he enacted.

Yes, pollutants are more dangerous than they were 50 years ago, and they're in a lot more places. Does that mean that the environment was A-OK in 1949? Of course not. In another 50 years, they'll probably be even more dangerous pollutants in even more places. Things are, and have always been getting progressively worse, I'm certainly not trying to argue that, but to pick 1950 as the time when things just got so much worse seems sort of arbitrary to me.

I'm not trying to say that repukes are good on the environment, but they didn't cause all the worlds environmental destruction by themselves, either.

[sandnsea]

43. We moved to exploitation of resources

As a federal policy, across the board. That is when things got horribly bad, across the country.

See my post below in Jackson being the first to set aside land in 1832. In modern times, it's been Democrats who have forced the issue on the environment. It's stupid to hand this over to Republicans when they've proven time after time that they put money over human lives. They ALWAYS have, ALWAYS. Why deny it?

[hughee99]

47. Deny it?

Other than TR, have I stuck up for ANY repukes? Was TR actually good on the environment? IMO, yes.

When have Americans NOT exploited resources? We've been extracting coal, oil, gold and other metals, cutting timber, fishing, and populating the land for hundreds of years now.

In what way is my saying any of this "handing over to the Repukes"? In what way am I denying that repukes have been bad on the environment, or that Democrats haven't been good? Other than Roosevelt, who hasn't been president for almost a century, I'm not even talking about politics, I'm talking about pollution.

[piedmont]

8. It's been going on since humans invaded this continent.

The U.S. just fast-tracked it in the industrial age.

[Xithras]

12. This continent? Heck, since we left Africa is more accurate.

Note the number of mass extinctions around the world that can be tied to the introduction of humans.

[piedmont]

13. Yep. We're a marvel of competitive and predatory ability. nt

[Xithras]

15. That's not our marvel.

All species have the ability to hunt prey species to extinction within their respective ecological niches. Paleontology is full of examples of animals that went extinct once a new predator moved into their territory, and most of us view that as a perfectly natural occurrence. That's what evolution is all about...adapt or die.

The marvel of humanity is our ability to create our own ecological niches. We are always the dominant predator, and since we can adapt to nearly any environment, we become the top predator in every niche. The rest of the world doesn't have a chance.

[piedmont]

18. I meant that somewhat sarcastically, but...

There are other keystone species out there that do alter their environment to create their own habitat. Beavers are one example.
Where humans are going "wrong" is that we are altering the ENTIRE biosphere, both abiotically and biotically, to our own detriment. We may be bringing about not just other species' extinctions but our own as well.

[endarkenment]

16. Well yes but on a much lower scale.

There is a huge difference from human society's affect on the ecosystem before the industrial age and after. Yes of course we hunted entire species to extinction, deforested vast regions with our agriculture, but we are orders of magnitude beyond what we could do to the world around 1700 or so. For example, go back and look at Al Gore's CO2 hockey stick graph. It tracks the industrialization of human society on the planet and nothing else.

[SayWhatYo]

21. Too bad humans won't go extinct.

Just playing, please don't attack me(anyone).

[Karenina]

37. I wouldn't be so sure...

It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature.

[sandnsea]

19. Humans are part of the planet

There's a difference between having an impact that can be corrected - and mass destruction due to the arrogant belief that you have the right of ownership to destroy it.

[napi21]

9. Destruction of our planet didn't begin in the 50's! It was well before that!

I think it began with the industrial revolution.

There were WOMDERFUL things that happened to the US during the IR, and a lot of the bad things just weren't recognized.

I was born in a little town that had a Company called Isabella Furnace, that employed lots of the residents. We also had a small teel mill, the small town next to us had a small steel mill, and these towns were suburbs of the City of Pittsburgh, Pa.(Also know for a lot of years as "THE SMOKEY CITY"! The furnace in our house was coal fired, and YES most families had a car! (No I'm not THAT old that I would remember the horse and buggy!)

All our woodwork in the house was painted white, and the only time I remember them NOT having little tiny black balls of soot on them was right after Mom had dusted or washed them. Mom washed my hair every day right after I got home from school, and the soapy water was really dirty and dark. All that was from the polution being strewn into the air by the mills and the railroad.

A LOT has been done to fix those problems, but then we created more problems. It seems like almost enough people are starting to pay attention to those problems now, and if we keep pushing, we'll get a lot of them fixed too.

[John Q. Citizen]

11. I read a great essay on the beginning of the environmental movement in Montana.

The Butte Ladies Gardening Club spearheaded the effort to get the city to require the smelters to build smokestacks because they cooking copper ore on the ground in the open and the ubiquitous smoke was killing the plants and gardens all over the mining city back in the 1880's.

It took a few years, but they got the law passed and it made a huge immediate difference.

[sandnsea]

17. One isolated incident

The pollution was so bad you couldn't SEE.

But after WWII, this country went into overdrive and it was in large part due to the changes made by Eisenhower.

Republicans have alway seen the land as a resource to exploit, not an environment to sustain humans.

[John Q. Citizen]

23. I think your thesis has some problems, as many posters have pointed out.

Obviously as our population grew, and industrialization increased, problems increased. Some of those problems weren't even recognizable until years later and health problem were traced back to them.

If you had said that in recent years Dems have been generally better on the environment than Repos I could agree.

But you do know that it was Nixon who proposed the creation of the EPA as a cabinet level dept, right? I mean LBJ never saw an oil well he didn't like, as far as I can tell.

Truman started testing A bombs on the surface, and Kennedy finally got the treaty that required they be tested underground.

Teddy Roosevelt, a Repo, created the national Park Service and was a precuser to the modern environmental movement.

I'm not sure we can always reduce every analysis of every issue down to Dems good Repos bad. It's a little bit simplistic.

[sandnsea]

31. Republicans are awesome, got it

And wonder why we can't win a national election. :eyes:

[John Q. Citizen]

34. Perhaps if we try to pass off bs as pearls of wisdom, it doesn't work? I just thought of

the worst environmental disaster that ever hit the US.

The dustbowl. It resulted from poor tillage practices on the Southern plains and it resulted in massive displacement of humans, widespread death and property loss. And it was in the 30's.

The Reagan administration was an environmental disaster. And so has been bush jr. bush senior deserves a mixed review, mostly bad with a few good spots. He passed the Clean Air Act at least, that jr. later gutted.

We won the last two presidential elections. Especially 2000.

So stop wondering. It wasn't my fault for critiquing your questionable thesis. And if you think Repos are awesome, that's your problem. It isn't my problem.

[Rosemary2205]

22. Um, destruction of the environment started long before Republicans.

Uh, whalers??? Buffalo hunters?? Throwing so much garbage and human waste out into the streets that people mostly lived on the 2nd floor to escape the stench? (1700's) -- there was something about the Ganges (sp) river in India becoming so polluted with human waste and remains that whole cities were dying off and that was in the 1500's.

I'm not saying republicans are good for the environment but you can't blame the whole human footprint worldwide on them.

[SoCalDem]

26. Anytime humans are introduced, destruction follows.

That human brain of ours has ways of planning "usage" of territory that animals, plants & topography "interfere" with. We immediately set out to "fix" things.. Damming rivers, chopping roads into wilderness, clearing land for farms, building "services" for our communities..etc.

The "Industrial revolution" set the modern wheels in mothing, and we haven't stopped yet :(

[sandnsea]

30. Impact follows

Destruction is something else altogther.

But hey, never mind. Go ahead and hand the issue over to the Republicans.

[John Q. Citizen]

39. Just because your thesis makes no sense doesn't mean people are handing anything to the Repos.

You seem to be wedded to the idea that if people don't accept your strange theory that we are doomed.

Chill. We aren't. After Reagan and bush jr, the issue is solidly in our column. But I would caution against saying it all the time, because it will lose it's impact.

Gore says global warming isn't a partisan issue. He's right.

However the solution may well turn out to be a partisan issue.

[sandnsea]

40. God, guns, gays and - global warming

They run on it, they win. Count on it. And by going too far in advocating their sensibility on the issue - we'll plant the seed that they're just as good on the environment as Dems are. Especially with Sheryl Crow out there promoting going minimalist with toilet paper.

Seen this happen too many times. Here we go again.

[MsRedacted]

44. Agreed and when people make it a black/white -- we are good you are bad

issue. You simply turn off people.

Uh . . .yes if we didn't have industrial revolution, we wouldn't have global warming or other environmental issues.

And ya know if those chinese hadn't developed the printing press -- none of those trees would have been cut down. But we'd all still be illiterate.

You can't stop progress and you can't blame people for unknowingly creating unintended consequences. We learn, we adapt -- that is what makes us great.

You aren't "branding" the republicans anything by admitting what is the truth. You are branding yourself a little off-kilter for insisting the rest of us buy your strange theory.

And I oughta know -- I brand companies and people for a living. And it frightens me when people use "branding" as a reason to quash other opinions.

[sandnsea]

51. When the Cuyahoga caught on fire

unintended consequences ceased being an excuse. Nevertheless, Republicans continue to be the ones ignoring the massive "unintended" consequences staring us right in the face. That's a fact. In order to hide their rape of the earth, they concocted false science, and BRANDED the Democratic Party as a bunch of treehugging hippies. That happened. It's reality. You can live in your wishy-washy world that meshes image and demographics and doesn't care about the truth of anything as long as your target market believes your hype - but some people can look at the timeline and make the same correlation they make when they look at the economic timeline. Republicans only care about making money at the expense of literally EVERYTHING else.

Actually, since you're in the business, I'm sure you know that to be true.

[MsRedacted]

57. No. Not true. You need to stop objectifying everyone who has ever voted

republican. They are not all out make money at the expense of everything. People are far more complex than that.

And no. . .

If your brand promise does not match the fullfillment of that promise -- your product will fail. Branding is MORE than a tagline. Why? most people are not total morons.

If that were not the truth -- then I wouldn't have a job. Because everyone would just SAY what they wanted people to believe. And people would beleive it. Oh if my job were that simple . . .

Look you may be one of those people who beleives everything you are told, but I can tell you that MOST people are not. So please stop insulting the rest of us.

[sandnsea]

58. Their product has finally failed

And here we are, propping them back up with lies in order to spare their wittle feelings.

Stupid.

That's the truth.

And most people DO believe everything they're told, if they're told in the correct way that pushes the correlating button - that's why you have a job. I'm sure you know that too.

[MsRedacted]

59. um . . .

SandnSea said:

"And most people DO believe everything they're told, if they're told in the correct way that pushes the correlating button - that's why you have a job. I'm sure you know that too"


Um . . .nope.

[MsRedacted]

36. Before you bash all Republicans for their environmental record. Keep in mind that

much of the conservation we have in this country today was due to Teddy Roosevelt who was THE FIRST president to. . .

Well -- don't take it form me. Here is a quote frm Wikipedia:

"Roosevelt was the first American president to consider the long-term needs for efficient conservation of national resources, winning the support of fellow hunters and fishermen to bolster his political base. Roosevelt was the last trained observer to ever see a passenger pigeon, and on March 14, 1903, Roosevelt created the first National Bird Preserve, (the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system), on Pelican Island, Florida. Assuming the conservationist role was a natural step for him, and he decided that it was overdue to put the issue high on the national agenda. He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt urged congress to establish the United States Forest Service (1905), to manage government forest lands, and he appointed Gifford Pinchot to head the service. Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres. In all, by 1909, the Roosevelt administration had created an unprecedented 42 million acres of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges and 18 areas of "special interest", including the Grand Canyon.


This environmental record was unequaled until President Bill Clinton's term, 90 years later."

(emphasis added)

This means that all the dems between Teddy Roosevelt and Bill Clinton -- didn't do as much as Teddy Roosevelt.

Now I am not defending the Bush administration here. I am angry about their denial of global warming. But, I do know a number of conservatives who are very concerned abt the environment -- and in the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt are great conservationsists.

So let's just give credit where credit is due. Ok?

[sandnsea]

41. Jackson - 1832

Set aside Hot Springs Reserve in Arkansas.

Yellowstone was set aside in 1872.

Roosevelt was not the leader on the environment.

[MsRedacted]

46. Ummm, you would be taking on MOST historians by saying that.

Just so ya know -- and read my other comment above.

TD demonstrated what a president could do to protect this country's natural legacy.

[sandnsea]

49. It's a fact

Don't ask me how Teddy Roosevelt came to "the" environmental hero. He made one move, along with many others who did the same in their time. Kind of like Reagan winning the cold war. Republicans are masters at hammering away a point until it becomes reality - even if it has no basis in truth at all. They'll do it again on the environment and when we're dead and gone, Bush will be praised for signing Healthy Forests and Clear Skies.

[MsRedacted]

53. Look all I'm gonna say is -- if you really think there has been a republican

conspiracy dating back to TR to make him a leader in conservation rather than say -- Andrew Jackson.

Or if you beleive that somehow the RNC is re-writing history books -- and we are all just falling in line the a bunch of morons believing them.

Well I can't help you.

And if you think for a second that you understand branding -- well you don't. This ain't how it works.

Blaming the dead get's your brand no-where. Let's try to focus on present day reality.

[sandnsea]

56. Liars are liars

And they've been lying a long damn time.

[John Q. Citizen]

60. Except Reagan didn't win the cold war. The Repos just claim he did.

[sandnsea]

61. Well welcome to stupid Republican world

They also were never good on the environment.

That's the point.

WTF???

:shrug:

[John Q. Citizen]

63. The point is you repeatedly contridict your own argument and you

attack people because they don't buy everything you claim hook, line and sinker. Your arguments tend toward the black and white, when that's usually not how the world works.

I think the EPA was a great idea.

How about you?

[sandnsea]

64. Oh honestly

"On August 31, Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska complained: "Suddenly out of the woodwork come thousands of people talking about ecology."

Sound familiar?

Who wrote the bill? Gaylor Nelson? Democrat?

http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/epa/15c.htm

Republicans being forced to do the right thing by Democrats, or big business being forced to do the right thing by activist groups - however you want to term it, is the same story, over and over.

My arguments are not black and white - but I absolutely refuse to entertain the clear wrong-headedness of the right wing. I don't pretend lies and falsehoods are ideas worthy of policy debate. I don't know why anybody does.

[happyslug]

38. Two Points, Gifford Pinchot and Donora

First, while Theodore Roosevelt supported what he called "Conservation", his point man was the head of the Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot saw the National Forest as a national resource to be used, but also saved. Thus he as often in fights between the radical conservationist like Muir, and local interest who wanted to "re-use" the land quicker than Pinchot thought was good (He was fired for this by President Taft in 1910).

Anyway, Pinchot always wanted to forest to rejuvenate itself before it was to be cut down again. He had a long term vision, he did not foresee any of the National Forest producing wood till after he was dead, in the mean time the forest was to be a reserve for animals and nature. At the same time, Pinchot wanted the Forests to be be cut down WHEN IT WAS TIME TO DO SO. That way people would see the trees as an asset to be saved and used when mature, not as some sort of lost opportunity for wealth because the tree was not cut down today.

For more on Pinchot see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gifford_Pinchot
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/ppet/pinchot/page1.asp?secid=31
http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/governors/pinchot.asp?secid=31
http://www.foresthistory.org/Research/usfscoll/people/Pinchot/Pinchot.html

http://www.pinchot.org/

Second, the Donora disaster of 1948.

"Between Oct. 26 and 31, 1948, 20 people were asphyxiated and over 7,000 were hospitalized or became ill as the result of severe air pollution over Donora, Washington County, the Monongahela River town of 14,000."
This is the worse single air pollution death in history, and started the environmental movement. Even the City of Pittsburgh and its county (The County of Allegheny) proceeded to do something about pollution. First by outlawing all visual forms of smoke (King Coal was replaced by Natural Gas Heating) but a general movement to improve the environment. This accelerated in the 1950s and lead to the First Earth Day in 1970.

http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/Rachel_Carson/donora.htm
http://www.post-gazette.com/magazine/19981029smog1.asp
(This includes a picture of Donora at Noon in 1948, with street lights on and barely visible).

http://www.fluoridation.com/donora.htm

[sandnsea]

45. Which changed in the 50's

Which is what I posted above. So what's your point?

And excuse me, radical conservationist Muir???

[happyslug]

48. Compared ot Pinchot, Muir was a Radical

Remember all things are relative, Muir at his time was on the far left when it came to the environment, and thus a "Radical Conservationist" at that time period.

My first point was that the Forest Service PLAN was ALWAYS TO INCREASE Timbering sometime in the future. Under Pinchot, that was to be 50-80 years in the future. In Pennsylvania Pinchot arranged for the State to buy huge acres of forest lands, not only for what is now the AlleghenY National Forest, but for various smaller State Forest (Whose total acreage exceeds Allegheny National Forests). One of the problems with most of these lands was when purchased the land had few if any trees on them. Rapid regrowth was NOT want Pinchot wanted, he wanted sustain growth over many decades, and then cut the tree back down and start the process all over again (Compared ot Muir who wanted to preserve all lands as the lands were i.e. WITHOUT Any cutting down of trees, even if the trees are "mature".

As to Donora, My point was the need for pollution controls were clear by the 1950s and contained till the passing of federal legislature in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

[sandnsea]

50. Instead of Muir & Pinchot

We ended up with Pinchot and McArdle, and the mess we've got today. That's my entire point. How can anybody say Republicans didn't cause that? And we're handing it to them again, by praising the right and helping them villify the left - just like you're doing with Muir.

Incredible.

[ret5hd]

66. edit:wrong place

[happyslug]

72. I have a weakness for Pinchot, anyone who abolished the Coal and Iron Police can't be bad

Pinchot push to purchased thousands of Acres of land that had been stripped of their timber, his push to have the state pay a fee for any lands the state owned in any local school Districts and Municipalities to such local government (Thus encouraging the local people to support the state forests), did more for the State of Pennsylvania than any of the preservation plans of Muir.

Note: The following pictures are mostly from the University of Pittsburgh Photo Collection, which is on line. I do not know the status of the Copyright of these photos so I decided to opt to refer you to the picture galley from the University of Pittsburgh instead of the pictures themselves.

Here is a picture from the University of Pittsburgh of the Monongahela Incline in 1900


The Duquesne Incline in 1926:


The "Indian Steps" up Mt Washington in Pittsburgh in 1911


Another view of the "Indians Steps" and Duquesne Incline in 1935.


For more old pictures of Pittsburgh see (This includes an "Aid" to increase the size of the above thumbnail pictures):
http://digital.library.pitt.edu/ead/

Look at the hillside, devoid of trees in 1900, some scrubs trees by the 1930s but today full of trees as seen in the following pictures:




This is Pinchot's legacy, he wanted to undo the damage done to the environment that was known in his own time. In that he succeeded, but he realized the only way to do so was to make sure the owners of the property had incentives to keep the trees (and the wildlife dependent on those trees) from being cut down. That was the trust of Pinchot's Conservationism, a thrust I can both see and enjoy today.

Muir, on the other hand, was so concerned about preserving what already was (But under threat) he ignored how to undo the damage already done. While Pinchot can be attacked for he always wanted to cut down the trees (Later as oppose to sooner) so can Muir for only trying to save small fragments of nature in an otherwise sterile world totally changed by man.

In many ways, both Pinchot and Muir were products of their time. Both knew preservation on a large scale was NOT POLITICALLY POSSIBLE AT THAT TIME. Muir wanted to save little bits here and there, Pinchot wanted to recover as much as possible what had been lost. The difference between Muir and Pinchot was more a dispute on tactics then mission. Do you preserve what already exists, or do you undo damage already done? In many ways you have to do both, but Muir preferred to preserve more than undo, while Pinchot preferred to undo more than preserve.

[sandnsea]

73. Consequently the word AND

as opposed to doing neither which is what we get with most Republicans - and which is what really took off with a shift to "resource" management as official policy in the 50's.

The damage was isolated and correctable at the time of Pinchot. At the same time, Muir knew that capitalist expansion would always put pressure on natural resources and rightly advocated protecting it. That's why they are both well-regarded. If it had been left to the pure capitalits, who always lean Republican, we'd long for the days of turn of the century Pittsburgh. Not to mention, the reason Pittsburgh looks like it does today is because the industries it was built on have died. They had no choice but to go green in order to attract high-tech to the area, whose employees won't work in polluted stink holes.

[John Q. Citizen]

54. John Muir. He was one of the most influential "preservationists." He was

considered radical because he advocated vast tracks be set aside as pristine wilderness, as a spiritual matter. Off limits to economic exploitation, roads, and modern machines. And that was radical when it was first proposed.

Some other issue of environmental concern. The vast water projects thoughout the arid west, which were sacrosanct US policy for both Repo and Dem administrations for 70 odd years. The reclaimation Act of 1902 set it in motion, and we are still paying the price today.

Jimmy Carter was the guy who finally said enough. He put an end to the era of big dam building and massive water diversion.

[sandnsea]

55. And we set aside wilderness

And that has proven to be the most sensible thing done in the last 100 years. As I said above, the last time we could say "unintended consequences" was when the Cuyahoga caught on fire. Before that, however, it was always Republicans who had the least concern for humans and the planet - and it still is. We cannot trust them to turn the environment over to them, we never could, we should not pretend that that they are up to the job. They just aren't.

[CatholicEdHead]

42. Look even earlier to the Civil War rampup

That was the start of the industrial revolution. It only went downhill fast after the 1860's.

[Locrian]

52. population

Population explosion = environmental destruction.

[NashVegas]

62. I'm Thinking of the Romans and Their Tin Mines

Tin was one of the reasons for the Roman conquest of England, IIRC. There you have the example not just for exploitation of resources, but military weight for its purpose.

[sandnsea]

65. Global warming is because of that

You bet, right. Way to intentionally miss the point in order to add - what exactly???

[NashVegas]

69. Exploitation

Is the beginning and the end of environmental destruction. Sorry you don't get it.

If you can't stand people disagreeing with you, maybe you should rethink whether or not to hit the 'send' button.

[ret5hd]

67. I don't get it...

If i don't agree with you that real environmental destruction began in the 1950's, I'm siding with the republicans and helping hand them another victory.

And it's not just me, it's Sheryl Crow too.

[sandnsea]

68. That's it exactly

I'm in awe of your reading comprehension and cognitive thinking abilities. :sarcasm:

[MadHound]

71. It started long ago, though it has sped up considerably over the past 300 years

Enviromental degredation started when mankind switched from a hunter gather society to an agricultural society. Cleaning vast swathes of land, diversion of waters, the use of fire on a large scale. However the process was greatly speeded up with the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Since then, it has multiplied exponentially.