Ironically, or perhaps inevitably, the conservation movement kicked off at the same time as the 2nd Industrial Revolution in the late 1800s. Railroads, steel, scientific progress, communication (telegraph), early electrification and combustion engines converged to create a giant leap from a society that was still largely rural and centered around agriculture, to one of rapid urban and industrial growth. With that, however, came an immense demand for natural resources. In the Americas, the land had been seen as endless in what it could provide. Even before industry kicked into high gear, the fallacy of infinite resources was already being felt. A number of voices in the 1800s began to speak to the need to conserve and manage natural resources. Two would forever be remembered for making conservation a way of life, rather than some fringe movement.
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Muir and Roosevelt: Titans of Nature
Do You Live in an Artificial World?
The average person now spends 93 percent of their life indoors…This is a catastrophe, the final nail in the coffin for the human soul. You live nearly all your life in a fake world: artificial lighting instead of the warmth of sunlight or the cool of moonlight or the darkness of night itself. Artificial climate rather than the wild beauty of real weather…All the surfaces you touch are things like plastic, nylon, and faux leather instead of meadow, wood, and stream. Fake fireplaces; wax fruit. The atmosphere you inhabit is now asphyxiating with artificial smells — mostly chemicals…instead of cut grass, wood smoke, and salt air…In place of the cry of the hawk, the thunder of a waterfall, and the comfort of crickets, your world spews out artificial sounds…Dear God, even the plants in your little bubble are fake. They give no oxygen; instead the plastic off-gases toxins…This is a life for people in a science fiction novel…Living in an artificial world is like spending your life wrapped in plastic wrap. – John Eldredge writing in Get Your Life Back.
Darrick Dean 