Oversight of Chapter 2:The Evolution of Environmental Policy in the United States

When we as people talk about environmentalism today, we think about recycling our plastics, our national parks, the climate protests that happen all over the world, but behind that  mindset on protecting nature it didn't just appear with simple things such as earth days or the EPA .In Chapter 2 :The Evolution of Environmental Policy in the United States,it had showed how environmentalism slowly started in the earlier days of settlement.(Theis & Tomkin, 2012, Chapter 2)

Back when the colonists first arrived, the mindset was much simpler as nature seemed unlimited, the forest seemed to stretch forever, as well as farmland and rivers,seeming endless and bottomless. if the land that was settled on was to wear out, they would  just move west and use up more and more land. The people didn’t worry about waste because the land that they settled on, didn’t seem to run out and that’s the attitude that shaped early America is what rose questions later on.

And by the mid 1800s, the consequences were starting to show as soil was getting exhausted ,forests were disappearing in some regions in the United States and it was due to cities growing rapidly. And this was just the first wave of conservation thinking. People like Jared Elliott, who started to warn farmers that they needed to Practice better than farming practices and if not productivity would start to decrease. In this era, they weren’t thinking much about protecting nature because it was beautiful and plentiful, but wanted to protect nature to maintain resources so the country could keep on growing, and this thinking eventually helps create early environmental institutions, such as the Department of Agriculture and The U.S. Forest Services.(Theis & Tomkin, 2012, Chapter 2)

 As time went on a new group emerged called the Transcendentalist who focused more on the emotion, philosophy, and soul into the conservation efforts. Writers like Ralph Waldo, Emerson and Henry David Thoreau soul nature as more than a resource, but saw it as a source of truth, peace and personal growth Emerson believe that nature resets the human spirit and Thoreau we’re on how he literally went to the woods to live intentionally at Walden Pond to help build his spirits and to seek his true self.And with their outgoing ideas, it pushed Americans to respect nature as beauty not just for what it provides, but for what it means to us.(Theis & Tomkin, 2012, Chapter 2)

Another way that helped the conservation of the environment was art. Which seems very unlikely due to it is just a painting or drawing, but arts was very impact in those times as the Hudson River school painted massive landscapes that had made people look tiny against mountains, rivers, and forest And as to us it seems very simple. Those paintings helped Americans see how wilderness was iconic and worth protecting.

With all of this science ,philosophy and culture, which all came together in the late 1800s in the early 1900s which gave a spark to many conservation ideas, such as John Muir, who brought, and showed spiritual love to wilderness into real action such as his fighting to protect places like Yosemite .Another conservationist Gifford Pinchot took a more practical approach to conservation by pushing the scientific resources to manage nature so that they could support our society long-term, and not just short term.(Theis & Tomkin, 2012, Chapter 2)

  In the reading of chapter 2, it made it clear that sustainability didn’t just happen overnight, but as a society we grew into it as we started with the mindset of "use everything” which then lead us in the direction of “use wisely”, which I see it eventually arrived to the point of “protect for our future”.

Timeline of Major Federal Environmental Laws Enacted In The US