“first environmental speech - 9.30.1847,It wasn't until Sept. 30, 1847, that America's first environmentalist, George Perkins Marsh, appeared and said enough taming already! In a speech to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, the Vermont sheep farmer, woolen-mill owner and congressman decried the systematic destruction of the American forests and the resulting watershed damage, erosion, silt run-off, dead fish and infertile fields. Seventeen years later, having studied parched Mediterranean lands, he sounded the global tocsin in "Man and Nature; or Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action," a detailed study of the ecological ruin of ancient civilizations. Deforestation and other land abuse plus population growth leads to desertification and doom. As went the Roman Empire, so goes Vermont.”
