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:
“The principal office of history I take to be this: to prevent virtuous actions from being forgotten, and that evil words and deeds should fear an infamous reputation with posterity.”
—Tacitus (c. 55–c. 120)
“You treat world history as a mathematician does mathematics, in which nothing but laws and formulas exist, no reality, no good and evil, no time, no yesterday, no tomorrow, nothing but an eternal, shallow, mathematical present.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“I think that Richard Nixon will go down in history as a true folk hero, who struck a vital blow to the whole diseased concept of the revered image and gave the American virtue of irreverence and skepticism back to the people.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)