In the nineteenth century, when these practices began, the subtle qualities of the environment were not a widespread concern. Resources seemed immeasurably vast. Nature itself was perceived as a “mother earth” who, perpetually regenerative, would absorb all things and continue to grow. Even Ralph Waldo Emerson, a prescient philosopher and poet with a careful eye for nature, reflected a common belief when, in the early 1830s, he described nature as “essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf.” Many people believed there would always be an expanse that remained unspoiled and
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