Term Paper on "Environment "The Actions"

Term Paper 4 pages (1222 words) Sources: 4

[EXCERPT] . . . .

"The plantation system and the initial overplanting of tobacco caused monocultural husbandry, which emphasized cash crops and depleted the soil. By the eighteenth century Virginia began suffering low yields, as the best lands were exhausted and eroding from overuse" (19). Since the crops were selling, any environmental effects were ignored. The primary concern of the day was money and the acquisition of it. Whatever was destroyed in the process was of little importance.

Settlement of the frontier was encouraged by Jefferson when he signed the Harrison Law Act, making it easier for American citizens to purchase land in the West (America.) After the expansion of the United States through the Louisiana Purchase, even more people ventured out into new territories. Thomas Jefferson sent surveyors Lewis and Clark to map and explore the newly acquired lands. "The immensity of the intervening wilderness appeared overwhelming and the challenge of subduing it daunting. Still, as the United States entered the nineteenth century, its people were fiercely optimistic, determined to conquer the frontier, and sure that its vastness was their new nation's greatest asset" (21). Citizens of the United States, unconcerned with the danger, set out to conquer the new land and laid waste to the natural resources that they encountered. This opened the West for further exploration, exploitation, cultivation, and immigration.

To this day, there are individuals who try to find loopholes in environmental law because the call of their wallets is stronger than the call of their conscience. They see the efforts of conservationists as extreme. So, if one considers that modern industrialists still look at environmental issues with marginal care even though they know the damage that has been done, if any at all, it is hard to judge their older counterparts with the same level of contempt. When the Industrial Revolution occurred, factories went up all over and natural resources were taken in at alarming rates to be turned into consumer products. One such result was the devastation of the wetlands. "The resulting eutrophication, the excessive growth of plant life, often killed wildlife through oxygen loss, and land levels dropped as the waters were drained" (Kline 41). This is only one example of the resulting destruction of the environment because of the actions of greedy executives. Another is the miners and all the fields that make a profit through the excavation of the land. "In the to reach mineral riches, miners peeled away the very crust of the earth, gutted mountains with water cannons, clear-cut woodlands, and destroyed the habitat of wildlife. The waste products of these enterprises were pumped into the atmosphere or piled in remote places" (42). Industrialization may have renovated production and led to massive employment of semi-skilled workers, but it was a savage curse to much of America's natural beauty.

The three most important contributing factors to the destruction of the natural environment by the United States citizens of the 18th and 19th centuries were ignorance, waste, and greed. The environment is still being victimized by waste and greed although very few people can now claim they are ignorant about environmental concerns. In the modern area, environmental issues are extremely important parts of public and political policy. Conservationists and environmentalists have made strides in saving the few undisturbed areas of the environment that we have left. However, there is no of putting things the way they were before the exploitation of resources by citizens of the United States and those who colonized North America before that.

Works Cited:

"America Looks West -- the Jeffersonian Vision." American Environmental History.

Kline, Benjamin. First Along the River: A Brief History of the… READ MORE

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