Environmental History from Economic Developmental History

HIST411 Environmental History 

Amanda Spencer

5/6/2016

Since the dawn of time, man has impacted the environment by hunting and gathering or by plowing fields. The land has been the source of food and shelter and trade. As people found more use of the land, they used it more and more to develop the land into usable resources. From those early times, economic development and the use of the environment have been intertwined. The development alters the environment and in turn the environment impacts development. These factors both impact the American mind on how development and the environment should connect. In sum, economic development has been the driving force behind how Americans have thought about, used, and interacted with their environment from the colonial period to the present.

Economic development has been the driving force behind the alterations of the environment. The first European colonists upon arriving in the now United States of America sought to market the natural resources to the European market (Cronon 109). This economic development, new to the environment, exploited the limber and wildlife. The white oak trees and white cedar were highly sought after. The trees grew tall and strong with weather resistant wood. The lumber was highly priced for ship building because of its water tightness (Cronon 109). As the harvest of white oaks and cedar increased and the lumbermen went deeper into the forest to find the trees, they only found the trees more difficult to find in the forest due to the overharvesting (Cronon 111). In this way the market for American resources was the driving force behind the alteration in the forest, in this case the disappearance of the white oak and white cedar.

Economic development has also been the driving force in altering the ground water and wetlands. In, The Bulldozer in the Countryside by Adam Rome, the Midwestern marshes were drained and flattened for farm land (Rome 121). The newly made homes were outfitted with leaky septic tanks for human water waste that contaminates the ground water (Rome 103). Most pivotal was the homes on bulldozed hills with imminent erosion (Rome 122). Rome shows that not only did development impact the land, but the land in turn impacted the development. The farms that were made from the marshes had very acidic soils and found farming tough, the ground water became polluted and the homes on bulldozed hills were covered in mudslides (Rome 227). The developers learned and started to take the environment into account before developing.

The economic development and use of the environment has impacted the American minds though the various works of Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir in their respective works of Walden, Nature, Sand County Almanac, and Boyhood and Youth. These men, were able to “Articulate with intensity and enthusiasm that commanded widespread attention. (Nash 122)” These men were “prophets of our out-of-door gospel. (Nash 122)” The paved the path for an intuitive relationship with the environment. These philosophers and dreamers were all born in the cities of the east and sought out the spiritual side of the land. While economics does play a role in everything, this American development was of the mind and not of the land.

The need to escape developed society into a spiritual sense of solitude in nature drove the famous environmental writers to seek spiritual moments of solitude and enjoyment in the American environment. The followers and disciples of these “prophets (Nash 122)” sought to do the same. The masses of Americans wanted to have the opportunity to separate themselves from their busy developed lives into wilderness areas. The Wilderness Act and other preservation laws were implemented to give the American people a place to go away from the economic development. Economic development birthed the idea to escape from the development into wild country and avoid the developed world.

From these new ideas of a spiritual quality to the environment, various protections were put in place to separate the developed lands from the lands saved for posterity and recreation. For the American people development was at odds with the environment so they voted the Wilderness Act of 1964 into law. It is written in the act that there will be no permeant structures or roads and no private enterprise in those areas. The desire to be away from development was the cause of the creating of the wilderness areas. The economic development lawfully stops at the gates of the wilderness areas.

The Adirondacks State Park was a re-creation of nature by developing a park from existing lands. The park is an accumulation of private lands and public lands that became under park rules for preservation in order to reestablish the environment for the use and enjoyment of the people (Jacoby 15). In this situation it was environmental development that became at odds with local people who also wanted to use the land for their economic development (Jacoby 30). The locals were used to traditional uses of that forest including poaching lumber and wildlife and doing their own wildfire burns to increase berry production and forage for the deer (Jacoby  76). The economic concerns of the locals were focused against the park’s strict environmental preservation legislation.

The Adirondacks State Park was a battle of economic developments with the environment stuck in the cross-fire. The locals and the park were fighting to develop the lands in their own ways. The locals wanted the economic benefit of the hunts and harvests from the lands while the parks wanted the park developed into a preservation area with recreational use and enjoyment.

Economic development has been a large driver of environmental thought and use in the United States. The early colonists’ exploited the environment for marketing to European powers, and modern developers exploited the environment for developing. However, in modern catastrophes, such as mudslides, ground water contamination and poor soil chemistry, have hurt development enough that through examination commenced to avoid these tragedies, various laws were enacted and various procedures were implemented to avoid environmental damages from development.

The development was the driving factor for the young dreamers which later became the spiritual prophets and advocates of the environment to get outside and seek solitude. The followers of these men were also driven by the economic development to find an escape and started advocating for places of solitude like Wilderness areas.

The environment has been driving by opposing views on the best ways to develop the lands to various economic benefit as seen in the Adirondacks State Park.

Overall, the environment and economic development are entangled and interwoven in the fabric of the American mind. These few instances teased from that fabric, show that the complex relationship between economics and the environment is not a simple one, nor only one sided. The relationship and driving factor of the economic development is a complex situation with influences from all sides including from the environment, local people, foreign powers and administrative personnel.















References



Jacoby, Karl. Crimes against Nature: Squatters, Poachers, Thieves, and the Hidden

History of American Conservation. University of California Press, Berkeley, Los

Angeles, and London. 2001.



Cronon, William. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New

England. Hill and Wang, New York. 2003.



Rome,  Adam. The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of

American Environmentalism. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2001.



Nash, Roderick Frazier. Wilderness and the American Mind. Yale Unversity Press, New

Haven and London. 2001.