Lesson XXVI: Vocabulary in Context

2.8. Our Plundered Planet Fairfield Osborn (1949) There is beauty in the sound of the words "good earth." They suggest a picture of the elements and forces of nature working in harmony. The imagination of men through all ages has been fired by the concept of an "earth-symphony." Today we know the concept of poets and philosophers in earlier times is a reality. Nature may be a thing of beauty and is indeed a symphony, but above and below and within its own immutable essences, its distances, its apparent quietness and changelessness it is an active, purposeful, coordinated machine. Each part is dependent upon another, all are related to the movement of the whole. Forest, grasslands, soils, water, animal life-without one of these the earth will die-will become dead as the moon. This is provable beyond questioning. Parts of the earth, once living and productive, have thus died at the hand of man. Others are now dying. If we cause more to die, nature will compensate for this in her own way, inexorably, as already she has begun to do. The story of the (American/edited by the R.D.) nation in the last century as regards the use of forests, grasslands, wildlife and water sources is the most violent and the most destructive of any written in the long history of civilization. The velocity of events is unparalleled and we today are still so near to it that it is almost impossible to realize what has happened, or, far more important, what is still happening. Actually it is the story of human energy unthinking and uncontrolled … Our people (mainly form Europe/edited by the R.D.) came to a country of unique natural advantages, of varying yet favorable climates, where the earth's resources were apparently limitless. Incredible energy marked the effort of a young nation to hack new homes for freedom-loving people out of the vast wilderness of forests that extended interminably to the grassland areas of the Midwest. Inevitably the quickest methods were used in putting the land to cultivation, not the desirable methods. Great areas of forest were completely denuded by ax or fire, without thought of the relationship of forests to water sources, or to the soil itself. Today a large proportion ... of the land originally put to productive use ... has become wasteland and has had to be abandoned. Finally, when will the truth come out into the light in international affairs? When will it be openly recognized that one of the principal causes of the aggressive attitudes of individual nations and of much of the present discord among groups of nations is traceable to diminishing productive lands and to increasing population pressures? Every country, all the world, is met with the threat of an oncoming crisis … The tide of the earth's population is rising, the reservoir of the earth's living resources is falling. Technologists may outdo themselves in the creation of artificial substitutes for natural subsistence, and new areas, such as those in tropical or subtropical regions, may be adapted to human use, but even such resources or developments cannot be expected to offset the present terrific attack upon the natural life-giving elements of the earth. There is only one solution: Man must recognize the necessity of co-operating with nature. He must temper his demands and use and conserve the natural living resources of this earth in a manner that alone can provide for the continuation of his civilization. The final answer is to be found only through comprehension of the enduring processes of nature. The time for defiance is at an end.