History
See also: Timeline of environmental eventsJones (1991) argues that from an economic perspective the Western nations have been no more destructive of natural resources than any other civilization. He rejects the suggestion that Christianity, by destroying animism, facilitated the ruination of nature in the West, stating he finds no evidence that any culture was or is less exploitive of the natural world than Christianity. He notes that Eastern agricultural history has numerous examples of massive deforestations, erosion, silting of rivers, and infestation with waterborne parasites. He points to large-scale animal extinction and wasteful agricultural practices by North American Indians before 1492. Jones allows that economic growth in the West did result in a higher level of resource use, but finds no evidence to support the view that such resource exploitation was a product of religion, culture, or geography.
Read more about this topic: Conservation Movement
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)