Total war and the total environment: Fairfield Osborn, William Vogt, and the birth of global ecology

Environmental History

Volumn 17, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 336-364

  Robertson, Thomas ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; MODERNITY; NATURAL RESOURCE; RESOURCE DEPLETION; SECURITY; SURVIVAL; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

UNITED STATES;

EID: 84861409002     PISSN: 10845453     EISSN: 19308892     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/envhis/ems020     Document Type: Review

References (143)

1. Angus McDonald, "The Great Rat Race," New Republic, September 6, 1948.
2. Unidentified editorial, September 25, 1948, 1948 Scrapbook, Fairfield Osborn Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress)
3. Osborn, Plundered Planet, viii
4. William Vogt, Road to Survival (New York:W. Sloane Associates, 1948), 142, 143.
5. Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), 8.
6. For environmentalism, see Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987)
7. Adam Rome, "'Give Earth a Chance': The Environmental Movement and the Sixties," Journal of American History 90, no. 2 (2003).
8. For conservation, see Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1959)
9. David Stradling, Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004).
10. For Osborn, Vogt, and the eugenics movement, see Allan Chase, The Legacy of Malthus: The Social Costs of the New Scientific Racism (New York: Knopf, 1977)
11. Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008)
12. Fred Pearce, The Coming Population Crash and Our Planet's Surprising Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 2010)
13. Garland Allen, "Old Wine in New Bottles: From Eugenics to Population Control in the World of Raymond Pearl," in The Expansion of American Biology, ed. Keith Benson, Jane Maienschein, and Ronald Rainger (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991).
14. A work that also places Osborn and Vogt in larger context is Bjorn-Ola Linner, The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and Post-War Population-Resource Crises (Strond: White Horse Press, 2003).
15. Also see Stephen Fox, John Muir and His Legacy: The American Conservation Movement (Boston: Little, Brown, 1981)
16. Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993).
17. An excellent new work on the history of American population thought is Derek Hoff, The State and the Stork: The Population Debate and Policymaking in United States History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming).
18. Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York: Knopf, 2003).
19. Works that stress how environmentalism extended consumer views include Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence, and Gregory Summers, Consuming Nature: Environmentalism in the Fox River Valley, 1850-1950 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006).
20. For a thoughtprovoking essay on consumption and environmental history, see Matthew Klingle, "Spaces of Consumption in Environmental History," History and Theory 42, no. 4 (2003): 94-110.
21. Edmund Russell, War and Nature: Fighting Humans and Insects with Chemicals from World War I to Silent Spring (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). This article attempts to answer calls by environmental historians to bring together diplomatic and environmental history.
22. See, for instance, Kurk Dorsey, "Dealing with the Dinosaur (and Its Swamp): Putting the Environment in Diplomatic History," Diplomatic History 29, no. 4 (2005)
23. Mark Lytle, "Research Note: An Environmental Approach to American Diplomatic History," Diplomatic History 20, no. 2 (1996).
24. Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge: Harvard University Press), 2001
25. Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
26. An inspiration for the influence of the global periphery on early conservation is Richard Grove, Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600-1860 (New York: Cambridge, 1995).
27. In doing so, this article hopes to integrate environmental history with larger American history along the lines that Ted Steinberg suggested in his "Bringing the Natural World into History," American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002).
28. Edward Murray East, Mankind at the Crossroads (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), 10, 344, 75
29. Raymond Pearl, "The Population Problem," Geographical Review 12, no. 4 (1922): 639-40; East, 75, 103, 299, 197, 191, 194. East and Pearl were prominent eugenicists. Alison Bashford has also emphasized that many interwar Malthusians of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s were motivated by erosion and reduced carrying capacity in addition to eugenics.
30. See Alison Bashford, "Nation, Empire, Globe: The Spaces of Population Debate in the Interwar Years," Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 1 (2007).
31. For much more on East and Pearl, see Thomas Robertson, The Malthusian Moment: Global Population Growth and the Birth of American Environmentalism (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2012), Chapter 1.
32. For carrying capacity, see Nathan Sayre, "The Genesis, History, and Limits of Carrying Capacity," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98, no. 1 (2008)
33. Royal Chapman, "The Quantitative Analysis of Environmental Factors," Ecology 9, no. 2 (1928): 114.
34. For Chapman, see Sharon E. Kingsland, Modeling Nature: Episodes in the History of Population Ecology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 95
35. Sayre, The Genesis, History, and Limits of Carrying Capacity, 128.
36. Leopold cites Chapman in Aldo Leopold, Game Management (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933), 26, 172.
37. For Leopold's thoughts on the Gila, see Susan L. Flader, Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude toward Deer, Wolves, and Forests (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1974)
38. Curt Meine, Aldo Leopold: His Life and Work (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988)
39. Paul Sutter, Driven Wild: How the Fight against Automobiles Launched the Modern Wilderness Movement (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2002)
40. Julianne Lutz Newton, Aldo Leopold's Odyssey (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006).
41. For Leopold in the Southwest, see Newton, Leopold's Odyssey, 57-59.
42. For the Kaibab, see Thomas R. Dunlap, Saving America's Wildlife (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1988), 65-66
43. Thomas Dunlap, "That Kaibab Myth," Journal of Forest History 32, no. 2 (1988)
44. Christian C. Young, In the Absence of Predators: Conservation and Controversy on the Kaibab Plateau (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)
45. Dan Binkley, D. M. Moore, W. Romme, and P. Brown, "Was Aldo Leopold Right about the Kaibab Deer Herd?" Ecosystems 9 (2006): 227-41.
46. Dunlap, America's Wildlife, 71, 74.
47. Alexander Carr-Saunders, The Population Problem: A Study in Human Evolution (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922)
48. Peder Anker, Imperial Ecology: Environmental Order in the British Empire, 1895-1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 101-2.
49. Leopold, Game Management, 49
50. quoted in Frank Golley, "Human Population from an Ecological Perspective," in Michael S. Teitelbaum and Jay M. Winter, Population and Resources in Western Intellectual Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 200
51. Leopold, "Conservation Ethic," Journal of Forestry 31, no. 6 (October 1933): 639, 643, 635.
52. Aldo Leopold, "A Biotic View of the Land," Journal of Forestry 37, no. 9 (1939): 728, 728.
53. Also see Newton, Leopold's Odyssey, Chapter 6.
54. Leopold, "Biotic View," 730.
55. Leopold, "Ecology and Politics," undated, I, LP, 10-6, 16.
56. Reprinted in Susan Flader and J. Baird Callicott, eds., The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991)
57. Leopold, "Wildlife in American Culture," Journal of Wildlife Management 7, no. 1 (January 1943): 5-6.
58. Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There (New York: Oxford University Press, 1949).
59. Leopold, "Postwar Prospects," Audubon Magazine 46, no. 1 (January-February 1944): 27
60. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, vii and ix.
61. Susan Strasser, "Consumption," in Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century, ed. Stanley Kutler (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996), 1025
62. Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, 55
63. Robert R. Nathan, Mobilizing for Abundance (New York: Kessinger, 1944), 98
64. as quoted in Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, 116.
65. For Keynesianism, see Robert Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Cohen, A Consumers' Republic.
66. Franklin Roosevelt, "State of the Union Address," January 6, 1941, as quoted in Cohen, A Consumers' Republic, 56.
67. For postwar Keynesianism, see Charles S. Maier, "The Politics of Productivity: Foundations of American International Economic Policy after World War II," International Organization 31 (Autumn 1977).
68. For the Marshall Plan as a Keynesian program, see Michael J. Hogan, The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 94, 429
69. Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).
70. For a discussion of Keynesian policies in developing country contexts, see Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2007).
71. Vandenberg's Statement, President's Committee on Foreign Aid, 1947, Box 5 (Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, MO)
72. Herbert Hoover, Testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Congressional Record, June 19, 1947, 7415
73. "Before Breakdown," Newsday (Hempstead, NY), October 19, 1948
74. John T. Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, Santa Barbara: University of California (host), Gerhard Peters (database), http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=12777.
75. For Osborn, see "Osborn, Fairfield," American National Biography, 783-84
76. Andrew Jamison and Ron Eyerman, Seeds of the Sixties (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), Chapter 3.
77. Quotation from Osborn, New York Zoological Society Annual Report (New York, 1942), 4.
78. For exhibits, see "Mayor Opens Zoo's New 'Veldt,'" New York Times, May 2, 1941
79. William Bridges, Gathering of Animals.
80. For Vogt, see William Vogt, "Some Notes on WV for Mr. Best to Use as He Chooses in Connection with a Possible Article," n.d., Folder 21, Box 5, William Vogt Papers (Denver, CO: Denver Public Library)
81. Jamison and Eyerman, Seeds of the Sixties, Chapter 3
82. Greg Cushman, "The Lords of Guano: Science and the Management of Peru's Marine Environment, 1800-1973" (PhD diss., University of Texas-Austin, 2003).
83. For the drainage campaigns, see William Vogt, Thirst on the Land: A Plea for Water Conservation for the Benefit of Man and Wild Life (New York: Natural History Press, 1937), 15.
84. Also see Maureen McCormickm "Of Birds, Guano, and Man" (PhD diss., University of Oklahoma, 2005, 50-60).
85. Fairfield Osborn, ed., The Pacific World: Its Vast Distances, Its Lands and the Life Upon Them, and Its Peoples (Washington, DC: Infantry Journal, 1944), xv
86. Osborn, "Genesis of a Book," Animal Kingdom 47, no. 2 (1944): 27-32.
87. For environmental concerns, see Osborn, Forty-Ninth Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society (New York, 1945), 4.
88. Osborn, "The New York Zoological Park," Science 93 (May 16, 1941): 467.
89. Osborn, Our Plundered Planet, 19.
90. Osborn, "Conservation and War," Animal Kingdom 47, no. 3 (May-June 1944): 49.
91. William Vogt, "Best Remembered," Manuscript, 1962, Folder 2, Box 4, William Vogt Papers (Denver, CO: Denver Public Library).
92. For Vogt on the war, see "Fellowship Application Form, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 1940," Folder 19, Box 5, William Vogt Papers (Denver Public Library).
93. Osborn, Our Plundered Planet, 33
94. Vogt, Road to Survival, 207, and 15
95. Vogt, Road to Survival, 299, 80.
96. Fairfield Osborn, Our Plundered Planet (Boston: Little, Brown, 1948), 161
97. Vogt, Road to Survival, 90.
98. Osborn, Plundered Planet, 198
99. George L. Peterson, "Conservation May Decide American-Russian Contest," unidentified newspaper and unknown date, 1948 Scrapbook, Container 9, Fairfield Osborn Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress)
100. Vogt, Road to Survival, 148, 41, 41, 44, 44, 65.
101. Richard Ely, The Foundations of National Prosperity (New York: Kessinger, 1917), 6
102. Osborn, Plundered Planet, ix
103. Vogt, Road to Survival, 72-73, 193.
104. Vogt, Road to Survival, 34, 285.
105. Shawn Miller, An Environmental History of Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 4.
106. Vogt, Road to Survival, 282-83, 24, 27, 144.
107. Osborn, Our Plundered Planet, 34, 24, 25.
108. For universalism, see David Hollinger, Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 51-57
109. William Graebner, The Age of Doubt: American Thought and Culture in the 1940s (Boston: Waveland Press, 1990), 69-70.
110. James Bernard Kelley, "The Motherless Earth," New York City New Leader, August 21, 1948, 1948 Scrapbook, Fairfield Osborn Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress).
111. "No Man Is an Island," New York Herald Tribune, October 19, 1948
112. Paul Hoffman's advance notes in "Our Imperiled Resources: Discussion Guide on Our Renewable Natural Resources," New York Herald Tribune booklet, 1948
113. found in "Organizational Material Mentioning Fairfield Osborn," Container 8, Fairfield Osborn Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress)
114. "Osborn Says We Must Guard Resources, or Face Socialism," New York Herald Tribune Forum Section, October 24, 1948
115. Folder "Speeches-Our Plundered Planet," Box 1, RG 2 (New York Zoological Society Archives).
116. Harry S. Truman, "Inaugural Address," January 20, 1949
117. Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Containing the Public Messages, Speeches, and Statements of the President, Harry S. Truman, January 1 to December 31 1949 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office 1964), 112-16.
118. "Outline of Remarks of Secretary Krug for Briefing Session of Participants to the UN Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources," n.d., UN Scientific Conference Folder, Box 76, Julius Krug Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress)
119. Proceedings of the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources, Vol. I (Lake Success, NY: UN Department of Economic Affairs, 1950), 7
120. Krug to Acheson, November 30, 1949, UN Scientific Conference Folder, Box 76, Julius Krug Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress)
121. Proceedings of the United Nations Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources, Vol. I, 6.
122. William Vogt, "Point Four Propaganda and Reality," manuscript for American Perspective, 1950, Folder 35, Box 3, William Vogt Papers (Denver, CO: Denver Public Library )
123. William Vogt, "Let's Examine Our Santa Claus Complex," Saturday Evening Post, July 23, 1949.
124. President's Materials Policy Commission, Resources for Freedom, Foundation for Growth and Security, Vol. 1 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1952), 21, 169
125. David Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954)
126. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960).
127. Richard H. Pough, "Book Notes," Audubon Magazine, May-June, 1948
128. "Books You Should Read," Outdoor America, n.d., 1948 Scrapbook, Fairfield Osborn Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress)
129. "Forgotten the Earth," The Living Wilderness (Autumn 1948)
130. Paul Sears, New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 1948 Scrapbook, Fairfield Osborn Papers (Washington, DC: Library of Congress)
131. Harold Ickes, "Man to Man," New York Post, September 26, 1948
132. Bernard DeVoto, "Crisis of Man in Relation to His Environment," New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review, August 8, 1948.
133. For Leopold's views, see Dunlap, America's Wildlife, 99
134. Leopold to Fairfield Osborn, December 8, 1947, "Vogt" folder, Box 3, Aldo Leopold Papers (University of Wisconsin Archives, Madison-Wisconsin).
135. "Forty Thousand Frightened People," New Republic, October 4, 1948.
136. Sinnott quoted in Herbert Nichols, "Greed Held Check to Stretching Natural Resources," Christian Science Monitor, September 15, 1948.
137. See, for example, Harrison Brown, The Challenge of Man's Future: An Inquiry Concerning the Condition of Man during the Years That Lie Ahead (New York: Viking Press, 1954)
138. Raymond Dasmann, Environmental Conservation (New York: Wiley, 1959).
139. Carl Sauer, "The Agency of Man on Earth," in William Thomas, Man's Role in Changing the Face of the Earth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), 68.
140. For Caldwell, see Thomas Robertson, " 'This Is the American Earth': American Empire, the Cold War, and American Environmentalism," Diplomatic History 32, no. 4 (2008).
141. David Brower in Paul R. Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), 13-14.
142. Time, Dec. 31, 1965
143. Daniel McKinley, "The Population Bomb," Defenders of Wildlife News, (Oct.-Dec. 1968).