History
Early European settlers to the United States brought from Europe the concept of the commons. In the colonial era, access to natural resources was allocated by individual towns, disputes over fisheries or land use were resolved at the local level. Changing technologies however, strained traditional ways of resolving disputes of resource use and local governments had limited control over powerful special interests. For example the damming of rivers for mills cut off upriver towns from fisheries. Logging and clearing of forest in watersheds harmed local fisheries downstream. In New England many farmers became uneasy as they noticed clearing of forest changed stream flows and a decrease in bird population which helped control insects pests. These concerns become widely known with the publication of Man and Nature (1864) by George Perkins Marsh. The environmental impact method of analysis is generally the main mode for determining what issues the environmental movement is involved in. Contrary to critics beliefs this model is used to determine how to proceed in situations that are detrimental to the environment in the way that is least damaging and has the fewest lasting implications.
Read more about this topic: Environmental Movement In The United States
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)