(Host) The aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and a recent visit to the
Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historic Park in Woodstock have
together gotten writer and commentator Martha Molnar thinking about
Vermont’s vital role in the nation’s environmental history – and future.
(Molnar) Only recently, I learned that Vermont was the
birthplace of the environmental movement. I felt ignorant not knowing
this, but then I asked some friends and they were equally surprised.
George
Perkins Marsh, born in 1801 in Woodstock , was a leading intellectual
and successful diplomat. But he’s best known as America’s first
conservationist.
In an 1847 speech to the Agricultural Society
of Rutland County, he condemned the systematic destruction of America ‘s
forests and the resulting erosion, silt, dead fish and infertile
fields. Seventeen years later, having lived on the parched shores of the
Mediterranean as U.S. ambassador to Italy , he sounded the global alarm
with his landmark book, "Man and Nature." In it, he developed the
concept of ecology, the interdependence of humans and the environment,
and detailed the ecological ruin that doomed civilizations that ignored
ecology. Mostly, he was alarmed by seeing Vermont head in the same
direction.
But Marsh understood that we’re destined to disturb
nature – especially in places like Vermont. Here, there’s virtually no
land is free from human influence, from the imprint of native Americans
to the sheep farming that denuded our forests. Today, Vermont has about
the same amount of forest as when the Europeans arrived – but a very
different and rapidly evolving kind of forest.
Marsh was not
like Thoreau, who believed that any action that altered the wilderness
was evil. Marsh saw humans as a natural part of the landscape, living on
it as good stewards thanks to the laws of a strong government. The
national historic park in Woodstock that bears his name is a place where
human and natural stories are effectively and beautifully intertwined
in a landscape of forested hills and a working farm.
So it was
that more than 150 years ago the environmental movement was born in our
small state. And today, Vermont remains close to the movement’s original
ideals. The working landscape we cherish is a clear example of man
living in harmony with nature while extracting his needs from it – in
this case, through small-scale farming and tourism. Tourists are drawn
to the mosaic of fields, forests, small towns and big sky, especially
when they’re uncluttered by garish billboards and large-scale industrial
development.
And Vermont is still a wellspring of social and
cultural innovation while respecting tradition. Bill McKibben, today’s
best-known Vermont environmentalist, continues Marsh’s work by sounding
the alarm on climate change and informing our national agenda.
The
ferocity of Superstorm Sandy, which may be attributed to rising sea
levels and changing hurricane patterns, is our latest environmental
wakeup call. Our response last year to Irene shows that Vermonters can
act swiftly and effectively. Perhaps Sandy will remind us that we are
the stewards of George Perkins Marsh’s legacy, and that sometimes the
vision of a single individual has the power to change the world.