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Sustainability
SUSTAINABILITY

A History
Revised and Updated Edition

Jeremy L. Caradonna
 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and
certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Jeremy L. Caradonna 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under
terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning
reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.

You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022932800
ISBN 978–0–19–762503–3 (pbk)
ISBN 978–0–19–762502–6 (hbk)
ISBN 978–0–19–762505–7 (epub)
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197625026.001.0001
To my family, my friends, and all the changemakers
courageous enough to take risks.
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction
1. Sources of Sustainability in the Early Modern World
2. The Industrial Revolution and Its Discontents
3. Eco-Warriors: The Environmental Movement and the Growth of
Ecological Consciousness, 1960s–1970s
4. Eco-Nomics
5. From Concept to Movement
6. Sustainability Today: 2000–Present
7. The Future: 10 Challenges for Sustainability

Notes
Bibliography
Index
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks goes, first and foremost, to my wife, Hannah, for her love
and tireless support. Our daughters, Stella and Mia, inspired every
step of the research and writing of this book. I am hopeful that the
world they leave behind one day will be more sustainable than the
one they inherited. My parents and in-laws provided much-needed
encouragement throughout the writing process. Tim Bent, Keely
Latcham, Amy Whitmer, and the entire Oxford University Press
(OUP) staff were a pleasure to work with; their guidance
strengthened the manuscript immensely. The manuscript (or
portions of it) was also read, critiqued, and improved by numerous
colleagues, friends, and collaborators. I thank them all for their input
and support. This book is a revised version of the original, which
appeared first in 2014 in hardback, and then in 2016 in a slightly
revised paperback. I wish to express my continued gratitude to the
good people of OUP. The manuscript has been updated to reflect
new research and changes that have taken place in our world over
the past several years, as the sustainability movement has become
more prominent, more globally accepted, more diverse, and even
more devoted to urgent action.
SUSTAINABILITY
 Introduction

“We must aim for a continuous, resilient, and sustainable use [of forests]. .
. .”
—Hans Carl von Carlowitz, 17131

“Sustainability is a lifestyle designed for permanence.”

—Chris Turner, 20102

As hard as it might be to believe, the world once made do without

the words “sustainable” and “sustainability.” Today they’re nearly
ubiquitous. At the grocery store we shop for “sustainable foods” that
were produced, of course, from “sustainable agriculture”; ministries
of natural resources all over the world at least claim to produce
“sustainable yields” in forestry and fisheries; the United Nations (UN)
has long touted “sustainable development” as a strategy for global
stability; consumers increasingly care about “sustainable lifestyles.”
Sustainability first emerged as an explicit social, environmental,
and economic ideal in the late 1970s and 1980s. By the 1990s, it
had become a familiar term in the world of policy wonkery—
President Bill Clinton’s Council on Sustainable Development, for
instance—but the embrace wasn’t universal. Bill McKibben, perhaps
the most prominent environmentalist of the past few decades, wrote
an opinion piece in the New York Times in 1996 in which he
dismissed sustainability as a “buzzless buzzword” that was “born
partly in an effort to obfuscate” and which would never catch on in
mainstream society. In McKibben’s view, sustainability “never made
the leap to lingo”—and never would. “It’s time to figure out why, and
then figure out something else.” (McKibben preferred the term
“maturity.”)3 Many others have since accused “sustainability” and
“sustainable development” of being superficial terms that mask
ongoing environmental degradation and facilitate business-as-usual
economic growth. Those are debatable points that will be discussed
in this book. But one thing is clear: McKibben was quite wrong about
the quick decline of “sustainability.”
One way to demonstrate this growing interest is to look at book
titles that bear the word “sustainable” or “sustainability.” It’s difficult
to find books published before 1976 that employ these words as
titles or even as keywords.4 No book in the English language used
either term in the title before 1970. Since 1980, there has been an
explosion of books and articles that not only use those words as
titles but also deal with the many facets of sustainability. Indeed,
thousands of books make up this growing body of literature, and a
quick Google search for “sustainability” returns hundreds of millions
of hits. Another way to measure the prominence of sustainability is
to look at the growing number of sustainability thought leaders who
have captured global attention, including the intrepid and inspiring
Greta Thunberg.
Sustainability is no longer a buzzword because it has become so
normalized and institutionalized. Governments, organizations,
communities, and individuals all over the world have sought to align
themselves with the basic principles of what they call
“sustainability”—a desire to create a society that is safe, stable,
prosperous, and ecologically minded. The practices inspired by the
concept of sustainability could give rise to the world’s third major
socio-economic transformation, after the Neolithic Agricultural
Revolution that took place 10,000 years ago, and the Industrial
Revolution(s) of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is
not only a buzzword but also a galvanizingly powerful term whose
application subsumes a number of other movements, environmental
perhaps most of all.
“Sustainability” is, first and foremost, used as a corrective, a
counterbalance, and directly tied to climate change. Those who use
it argue that we are over 250 years into an “unsustainable”
ecological assault on the planet that was triggered by
industrialization and that has left us with a lot of soul searching and
cleaning up to do. “Sustainability” therefore is a way of
acknowledging how humankind has created an imbalance. According
to Jeffrey D. Sachs, following Paul Crutzen, we now live in the Age of
the Anthropocene, in which “human activity” has become the
“dominant driver of the natural environment.”5 We are or have
become a kind of natural disaster.
The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), a network of scientists whose job it is to sort through and
summarize the state of climate science, has made it clear that
Earth’s climate system is warming steadily due to “anthropogenic
greenhouse gas concentrations,” such as carbon dioxide, methane,
and nitrous oxide, all of which trap heat (at infrared wavelengths)
that would otherwise escape from the Earth’s atmosphere. The
IPCC’s warnings over the past few years have become ever more
stark, disconcerted, and adamant. Here is the Fifth Assessment
Report (2014): “It is extremely likely that human influence has been
the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th
century,” the report concludes.6 A more recent “Special Report on
Global Warming of 1.5°C” confirms that “human activities are
estimated to have caused approximately 1.0°C of global warming
above pre-industrial levels, with a likely range of 0.8°C to 1.2°C.
Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C between 2030 and 2052 if it
continues to increase at the current rate.”7 Even more disconcerting
is the fact that the rate of change is accelerated in certain parts of
the globe, including the arctic. According to the Government of
Canada, the annual average temperature in northern Canada has
increased by approximately 2.3°C, portending dramatic changes to
the flora, fauna, and humans who call the arctic home.8 The IPCC’s
Sixth Assessment Report (2022) has upped the ante by describing
climate change as inevitable and irreversible, with only the severity
and lasting consequences in question.9 It is not an “if” but a “how
bad” situation.
To be clear, climate change is a “now” problem and will likely
preoccupy our species for the rest of the century, if not indefinitely.
It has already begun to alter natural systems and the environment in
troubling ways: increasingly unpredictable temperatures and
weather patterns, changes in the hydrological cycle that generate
droughts and larger and more frequent storms, rising sea levels from
melting ice caps, the die-off of some species, and so on. Climate
change is also magnified by “positive feedback cycles” (the loss of
reflective ice cover, the release of natural stores of methane, etc.)
that act as a domino effect and accelerate the speed of global
warming. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, average
global temperatures could rise by multiple degrees by 2100,
depending on the modelling assumptions and how humans choose
to face this crisis.10 Moreover, and sticking with Canada, a report
from 2020 called “Tip of the Iceberg” shows the mounting social and
economic costs of these climatic changes. The number of
catastrophic weather events in Canada has more than tripled since
the 1980s and in the 2010s there was over $14 billion in disaster
costs, weakening the overall economy.11 The diverse and mounting
costs of climate change is a theme in this book.
Our global footprint as a species continues to expand. When I
first wrote this book’s manuscript in 2013, the population of Homo
sapiens had just surpassed the 7 billion mark, in 2012. Now, writing
in 2021, the population is fast approaching 8 billion. The impact of
human beings on the planet is not shared equitably worldwide –
high-consuming, industrialized countries have a disproportionate
impact – but regardless, our cumulative impact exacts a heavy toll
on the planet. Human-generated pollutants, waste, and toxins have
accumulated to alarming rates, and our species now appropriates
over 30% of the net primary production (NPP) of organic material—
that is, we use or alter much of what nature has to offer—which has
resulted in devastating consequences for the world’s ecosystems.12
The overexploitation of fossil fuels is another theme in this book, as
a driver of climate change, a source of unsustainable development,
and the cause of a public health crisis. The burning of fossil fuels is
not only the main culprit for anthropogenic climate change, but it’s
also killing our species in a more immediate sense. A recent study
shows that, in 2018, 8 million deaths were caused worldwide from
fossil fuel pollution, or 18 percent of total global deaths.13
 This is what sustainability is meant to counteract: a moribund
economic system that has drained the world of many of its finite
resources, including fresh water and crude oil, generated a
meltdown in global financial systems, exacerbated social inequality
in many parts of the world, impaired public health, and driven
human civilization to the brink of catastrophe by unwisely advocating
for endless economic growth at the expense of resources and
essential ecosystem services.14
This book refers to “sustainists”—people ranging from scientists
and engineers to economists, educators, policymakers, and social
activists—who have taken on the many challenges listed above.
What they seek—and how—is always a subject of intense debate,
even among their own ranks, but the broad contours are simple
enough to articulate: safe and livable cities with abundant green
spaces and clean water; buildings with low embodied carbon that
produce or consume clean energy; public transportation networks to
decrease reliance on cars; agricultural systems that can produce
enough food to meet human needs without genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), agrochemicals, monocultures, or soil fertility
losses; a healthy environment with functional ecosystem services; an
economy that values human flourishing and wellbeing over
unequitable biggering. To sustainists, sustainability means planning
for the future and rejecting that which threatens the lives and
wellbeing of future generations. It means creating a “green,” “low-
carbon,” and “resilient” economy that runs on renewable energy and
does not support growth that would impair the ability for humans
and other organisms to live in perpetuity on the Earth.15 For many it
has a utopic dimension: decentralized forms of democracy that
support peace, equality, social justice, and an end to “environmental
racism.”16
In short, for those who embrace sustainability in the fullest sense
—as an environmental, social, economic, and political ideal—we’re at
a crossroads in our civilization. There are two potential paths ahead:
continue with business as usual, ignore the science of climate
change, and pretend that our economic system isn’t on life support,
or remake and redefine our society along the lines of sustainability.
This is a book about the making of the sustainability movement,
and to cover what is involved, I have to use the term “movement” in
the broadest sense of the word. Protesters marching and holding
signs or occupying public spaces are only part of it. Rather, it
encompasses the development and application of the concept of
sustainability in a broad range of domains: urbanism, agriculture and
ecological design, forestry, fisheries, economics, trade, population,
housing and architecture, transportation, business, education, social
justice, and so on. This book considers how sustainability went from
being a relatively marginal idea to being the centerpiece of
international accords; a top priority for governments, corporations,
and nonprofit organizations; and a philosophy of hope and resilience
with widespread appeal.
This book will give a historical account of the growth of this
movement: where it came from and how it took shape. While it is of
rather recent origin, the ideas that undergird it developed over long
periods of time. The UN conferences and commissions that have put
sustainability on the agenda of the international community since the
1990s were, in a sense, the result of three centuries of debate about
the relationship between humanity and the natural world. We cannot
understand the contemporary sustainability movement without first
understanding the historical events that made sustainability
thinkable.
The conceptual roots of sustainability stretch back at least to the
late seventeenth century. One of the main goals of this book is to
uncover the intellectual developments that have shaped the
movement.17
We should not assume that sustainability was a necessary
outcome or that industrial society was destined to embrace this idea
to the degree that it has, but the growing importance of the
“sustainability revolution” is tied to its historical development.18 Most
studies of the concept of sustainability, by contrast, dedicate less
than a paragraph to discussing its past, and many writers seem to
assume that the idea appeared, ex nihilo, for the first time in 1987,
when Gro Harlem Brundtland and the UN-backed World Commission
on Environment and Development released a hugely influential
document called Our Common Future, which offered the first well-
developed definition of “sustainable development.”
Yet the definition of sustainability has been a subject of intense
debate ever since the late 1980s. Is it an end point or a process?
What is considered sustainable versus unsustainable? Who gets to
make these determinations? It has become a commonplace in the
literature on the subject to suggest that the definition is too vague
and thus susceptible to exploitation and “greenwashing.”19 It is
certainly true that sustainability is a broadly conceived philosophy. In
this sense, it is a bit like “democracy,” “justice,” or “community,” all of
which are discursive fields that suggest a set of conditions rather
than a specific outcome. As we will see, in the marketplace of ideas,
breadth has been advantageous for sustainability.
A helpful place to begin is with etymology. Both “sustainable” and
“sustainability” derive from the Latin sustinēre, which combines the
words sub (up from below) and tenēre (to hold), and means to
“maintain,” “sustain,” “support,” “endure,” or, perhaps most
poignantly, “to restrain.” From Latin, the word passed to Old French
as sostenir and then to modern French as soutenir. (Similar linguistic
developments occurred in other Romance languages in the Middle
Ages.)20 From French, the word passed to English as the verb “to
sustain” and was in widespread usage by the Early Modern period; it
can be found in John Evelyn’s influential treatise on forestry called
Sylva (1664), for instance. The Oxford English Dictionary states that
the adjective “sustainable” entered common usage in 1965 via an
economics dictionary that used the phrase “sustainable growth.” The
noun “sustainability” entered English in the early 1970s. The coining
of these neologisms is an important indication that this verb (“to
sustain”) had developed by the latter part of the twentieth century
into an identifiable concept (maintaining human society over the
long term). It is also worth noting the parallel etymology of the word
in German: nachhaltig (sustainable) and Nachhaltigkeit
(sustainability) both entered the Saxon dialect of German in the
eighteenth century via Hans Carl von Carlowitz’s works on sustained
yield forestry.
Nearly all of the definitions of sustainability that have circulated in
recent years emphasize an ecological point of view—the notion that
human society and economy are intimately connected to the natural
environment. Humans must live harmoniously with the natural world
if they—or we—hope to persist, adapt, and thrive indefinitely on the
Earth. Rather than viewing society and the environment as separate
or even antagonistic spheres, the concept of sustainability assumes
that humans and their economic systems are indelibly linked. The
models that have been used to represent sustainability have
changed over time. From the 1980s to the early twenty-first century,
the main model was a fairly simple but powerful tripartite Venn
diagram that illustrated the interconnectedness of the “three Es”:
environment, economy, and equity or social equality (see Figure 1).
This model was endorsed by the 2005 UN World Summit and
appears in countless books, websites, and ecological models.
Sometimes a fourth “E,” education, is added to the diagram to reflect
the importance of education in establishing a sustainable society.
 Figure 1. The three Es of sustainability represented in a
diagram. A “sustainable” society requires a balance between and
equal concern for the environment, social equality, and the
economy.

A second model reconceptualizes the diagram as a series of

concentric circles, in which the environment is seen as the
foundation of sustainability, with society and the economy nested
inside (see Figure 2). The latter model reflects the critique by
sustainability economists, such as Peter Victor and Herman Daly,
who argue that society and the economy are supported by and could
not exist without the environment, and therefore that the
environment should take conceptual priority in any model of
sustainability. As Daly puts it, “All economic systems are subsystems
within the big biophysical system of ecological interdependence.”21
The most recent model to gain widespread recognition is the
“doughnut model” popularized by the sustainability economist, Kate
Raworth.22 It presents a more complex model for thinking about a
“safe and just space for humanity,” wedged between an “ecological
ceiling” and a “social foundation.” The ceiling is based on the nine
planetary boundaries identified by a team of scientists led by Johan
Rockström and was presented in an influential article from 2009. The
doughnut has been used extensively by the UN and has been
adopted as a vision and guide by numerous jurisdictions worldwide,
from Nanaimo to Amsterdam.
 Figure 3. The Doughnut Model

Many economists, ecologists, scientists, and organizations have

offered more precise definitions of sustainability, and a few are
worth mentioning here.23 In 1989, the Swedish oncologist Karl-
Henrik Robèrt founded a highly influential organization called the
Natural Step that is dedicated to promoting a sustainable society.
Robèrt and his colleagues have outlined “four systems conditions for
sustainability” that guide their consulting and advocacy efforts
around the world.

Figure 2. This diagram places the environment at the foundation

of the model. It emphasizes that human society and the
economy cannot exist without the environment, and therefore it
takes conceptual priority.

In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing (1)

concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust (digging), (2)
concentrations of substances produced by society (dumping), (3) degradation
by physical means (destroying), and (4) people are not subject to conditions
that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.24

The Natural Step uses a scientific framework to help uphold the

integrity of ecosystems and is geared toward shaping the practical
decisions of businesses, organizations, and governments. As such, it
says rather little about the role of individuals in creating a
sustainable society, which stands in contrast to some of the
definitions put forth by others.
Richard Heinberg, perhaps the world’s leading expert on peak oil
and a senior fellow-in-residence at the Post Carbon Institute, has
proposed five axioms (“self-evident truths”) of sustainability:

(1) Any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will
collapse. (2) Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of
resources cannot be sustained. (3) To be sustainable, the use of renewable
resources must proceed at a rate that is less than or equal to the rate of
natural replenishment. (4) To be sustainable, the use of nonrenewable
resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline
must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion. (5) Sustainability
requires that substances introduced into the environment from human
activities be minimized and rendered harmless to biosphere functions.25

One can see here the obvious affinities to the conditions laid out by
the Natural Step. Both definitions emphasize the need for society to
conserve resources, protect ecosystems, and minimize pollution,
although Heinberg’s definition lacks the element of social equity that
the Natural Step includes in its fourth condition.26
The physicist Albert A. Bartlett has developed perhaps the most
elaborate definition of sustainability, which involves several laws,
hypotheses, observations, and predictions and appeared in an essay
from 1997–1998 called “Reflections on Sustainability, Population
Growth, and the Environment—Revisited.” His definition is far too
complex to summarize neatly but it focuses on the risks that
unchecked population growth, economic growth, and fossil fuels
pose to long-term human existence on the planet. Bartlett is best
known for arguing that the term “sustainable growth” is an
oxymoron—a belief shared by many sustainability economists—and
for his sardonic contention that “modern agriculture is the use of
land to convert petroleum into food.” He concludes his discussion by
reiterating the need to limit population growth, to “make [economic]
growth pay for itself” and to “improve social justice and equity.”
What’s noteworthy about Bartlett’s definition is that it focuses less
on “the environment” and more on economic growth, population,
agriculture, and energy principles.27
Finally, there is John Dryzek’s interpretation of sustainability. In
Politics of the Earth, Dryzek argues that there are several competing
discourses on the environment in current circulation. Dryzek borrows
the term “discourse” from the French philosopher Michel Foucault,
who used the word not in its ordinary meaning of “dialogue” or
“debate” but to signify a way of talking about a body of knowledge,
one that takes shape over time, generates categories and
terminology, and has, at least in theory, a very formative impact on a
culture’s (or an individual’s) sense of what is true, real, and
essential.28 Dryzek argues that there has been a shift in
environmental discourses over the past few decades, away from a
focus on wilderness, preservation, and population growth and
toward energy supply, animal rights, species extinction,
anthropogenic climate change, depletion of the ozone layer, toxic
waste, the protection of whole ecosystems, environmental justice,
food safety, and genetically modified organisms. In the course of this
shift, several relatively new discourses have taken shape, alongside
an older Prometheanism (the idea that natural resources are
unlimited and markets can solve all environmental problems): green
radicalism, survivalism, problem solving, and sustainability. Dryzek
defines the latter as an “imaginative and reformist” discourse that
attempts to eliminate the conflict between economic and
environmental values. He also demonstrates the pluralism of
sustainability and the deep-seated disagreements—on such topics as
economic growth—that take place within it.29
Dryzek thinks of sustainability as a broad debate rather than a
specific model, system, or idea. Nonetheless, there are a number of
common terms, categories, and principles that recur in discussions
about sustainability. The four main features or principles of these
discussions are set out below and form the intellectual foundation of
the sustainability movement. Identifying these four features is
therefore key to understanding what this book historicizes.
HUMAN SOCIETY, THE ECONOMY, AND THE NATURAL
ENVIRONMENT ARE INTERCONNECTED
This is the essential idea in the sustainability models shown above. It
has roots in the science of ecology, which, as Donald Worster has
shown in Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas, stretches
back to the eighteenth century, even before the word “oecologie”
was coined in 1866.30 Ideas about “nature’s economy” have passed
through several stages of intellectual development since the 1700s.
The idea of an ecosystem, in which living organisms and nonliving
components are tied together by nutrient cycles and energy flows, is
a relatively new idea in ecology and one that has had a profound
impact on the “systems thinking” of sustainability. The three Es is
essentially an ecological idea that stresses the dynamic interaction
between human communities, the flow of resources, and the natural
environment. The doughnut is but a more complex framing of the
same basic idea.
Sustainability involves more than “the environment”; it is equally
inclusive of social sustainability (often summarized as well-being,
equality, democracy, and justice) and the economics of wellbeing,
but above all the interconnectedness of these domains.31 Indeed,
the field of sustainable development has generated overlapping
definitions of economic, environmental, and social sustainability. The
economic dimension requires, for instance, a system that can
produce goods and services on a continuous basis, avoid excessive
debt, and balance the demands of the different sectors of the
economy. The environmental dimension requires the maintenance of
a stable resource base, the preservation of renewable resources and
the “sinks” that process pollution, and the safeguarding of
biodiversity and essential ecosystem services. Finally, the social
dimension of sustainability involves a range of factors, including a
fair distribution of resources, equal opportunities for all citizens,
social justice, health, mental well-being and the ability to live a safe
and meaningful life, access to education, gender equality, democratic
institutions, good governance, and political participation.32 In short,
for a society to be considered sustainable, it must address not only
environmental but also social and economic issues.

A SOCIETY WILL RESPECT ECOLOGICAL LIMITS OR FACE COLLAPSE

The idea of limits is a direct response to the assumption in classical
economics and industrialism that nature is essentially a cornucopia,
that natural resources can never run out (or that market prices and
technology will always “save us”), that overconsumption is not a
problem, and that the human population can continue to grow
indefinitely. As economist Julian Simon put it in 1997, “The material
conditions in life will continue to get better for most people, in most
countries, most of the time, indefinitely.”33 Economists and ecologists
began to question economic and population growth in the mid-
twentieth century, but the work that is most closely associated with
these concerns is the Club of Rome’s 1972 bombshell, The Limits to
Growth. In that book, systems theorists Donella Meadows, Dennis
Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III argued that
the world’s growth-obsessed society was hitting a wall. “If the
present trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food
production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to
growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next 100
years. The most probable result will be rather sudden and
uncontrolled decline in both population and industrial capacity,” they
wrote. Jared Diamond’s Collapse reminds us what happens to
societies that live beyond their means.34
The iconoclastic work of the Club of Rome, combined with the
writings of other ecological economists in the late 1960s and 1970s,
challenged conventional economic thinking and forced a global
debate on the drawbacks of growth.35 The basic idea that humans
need to live within limits is now a basic assumption for sustainists,
as well as ecologists, even though divisions on the question of
economic growth remain marked.36 In the 1990s, Daly laid out three
simple rules that define the limits to energy and material throughput
that are now common fare in the literature on sustainability:
 • For a renewable resource—soil, forest, fish—the sustainable
rate of use can be no greater than the rate of regeneration of
its source.
• For a nonrenewable resource—fossil fuel, high-grade mineral
ores, fossil groundwater—the sustainable rate of use can be
no greater than the rate at which a renewable resource, used
sustainably, can be substituted for it.
• For a pollutant the sustainable rate of emission can be no
greater than the rate at which that pollutant can be recycled,
absorbed, or rendered harmless in its sink.37

A SOCIETY THAT HOPES TO STICK AROUND LONG TERM NEEDS TO

PLAN WISELY FOR THE FUTURE
The intergenerational aspect of the sustainability movement takes its
inspiration, in part, from the Iroquois Confederacy’s thousand-year-
old oral constitution that requires chiefs to consider the impact of
their decisions on distant future generations: “In every deliberation,
we must consider the impact on the seventh generation.” The idea
that a society should plan for the future—that it should not
“mortgage its future” or create undue burdens on future humans—is
part of the ethical consciousness of sustainability. Sustainability
advocates argue that actions likely to create social, economic, and
environmental harm—unchecked deforestation, the creation of
radioactive waste, emitting large quantities of ozone-depleting CFCs
and GHGs, and so on—are unethical because they force upon future
generations (in addition to our own) problems that would not have
otherwise existed. It is unethical to benefit at the expense of our
yet-to-be-born descendants. Our Common Future famously used
intergenerational language in its definition of “sustainable
development”: “Humanity has the ability to make development
sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs.”38 The industrial ecologist John Ehrenfeld argues that we
need to assume the “possibility that human and other life will
flourish on the planet forever.”39
 A literary variant of this idea appears in Alan Weisman’s The
World Without Us, which suggests that human society should be
considered sustainable only if, in the event that all humans were
suddenly to disappear from the Earth, the remnants of society
wouldn’t impede the ability of other species (flora and fauna) to
flourish.40 As it stands now, a mass die-off of Homo sapiens would
have devastating effects on global ecosystems. Think of, for
instance, the more than 440 nuclear power plants worldwide that
could explode or melt down. But, more prosaically, sustainability
demands more prudence, more foresight, less entitlement, and less
selfishness in socio-political, economic, and environmental planning.
The growing interest in resilience and adaptation reflects the need to
plan long into the future.

LOCALIZE, DECENTRALIZE
Sustainability, as an idea and a movement, is a reaction against the
perceived unsustainability of industrial society (or at least many of
its core features). The proposed idea of returning to small-scale
energy production, local economies and agriculture, decentralized
decision making, and low-impact practices is not directed at, say, the
highlanders of New Guinea, who have lived in harmony with their
surroundings for over 40,000 years.41 The idea that “small is
beautiful” is a radical notion only in the context of a massive
industrial society that concentrates power in the hands of elites,
centralizes and transports resources over long distances, and
operates with the assumption that energy production must come
primarily from dirty and nonrenewable fossil fuels. Similarly, the “buy
local” movement is a reaction to the growing dominance of
international agro-business and industrial conglomerates. The idea
of going small and local—it’s almost always conceptualized as a
“return” of sorts—stems from an awareness that the conventional
practices of industrialism cannot continue in their present form
forever.42 Thus reemphasizing the small and the local is a way of
rejecting one of the core assumptions of the Industrial Revolution
and modernity: the idea that a large and centralized society running
on dirty energy is basically an unstoppable juggernaut. By contrast,
sustainists see industrial society as weak and vulnerable to collapse,
while the reorientation toward the local is offered as a strategy for
societal resilience.
The concept of sustainability is here heavily influenced by E. F.
Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered,
which made a huge splash in political and economic circles when it
was first published in 1973. Schumacher, who was the chief
economic advisor to the United Kingdom’s National Coal Board,
made an about-face against classical economics and attacked the
developed world’s centralized energy production, overreliance on
fossil fuels, public disempowerment, and the fanatical faith in
unlimited economic growth. “The substance of man cannot be
measured by Gross National Product,” he wrote in one famous
passage. Elsewhere he noted:

The economics of giantism and automation is a left-over of nineteenth-

century conditions and nineteenth-century thinking and it is totally incapable
of solving any of the real problems of today. An entirely new system of
thought is needed, a system based on attention to people, and not primarily
to goods—(the goods will look after themselves!). It could be summed up in
the phrase, “production by the masses, rather than mass production.”

Schumacher took issue with all forms of centralized “giantism”—

totalitarianism, command economies, and oligarchic capitalism—and
offered a framework for a new economic system that focused on
small-scale political units and technologies, local decision making
and energy production, self-sufficiency, and the humanization of
work. “It is moreover obvious that men organized in small units will
take better care of their bit of land or other natural resources than
anonymous companies or megalo-maniac governments which
pretend to themselves that the whole universe is their legitimate
quarry.”
Schumacher’s philosophy of economics had a huge impact on the
sustainability movement. But even beyond the economic
considerations, a return to the small and the local defines an ethos
of duty and empowerment. As Dryzek reminds us, sustainability
assumes action on the part of individuals—a decentralization of
responsibility—rather than a passive attitude that expects
governments or “someone else” to solve our problems. The idea of
“powering down”43 our society—of simplifying, of reappreciating
local culture and resources—has a multiplicity of applications that
range from food consumption (e.g., the 100-Mile Diet) and energy
creation (e.g., Net-Zero homes) to localized decision making
processes (e.g., municipal sustainability action plans and
neighborhood land use committees) and support for local and small
businesses.
The small and the local have been applied and interpreted in a
number of ways over the past few decades. Consider the ninth of
Holmgren’s permaculture design principles: “Use small and slow
solutions.” Rifkin touts the benefits of a “distributed low-carbon era”
and “lateral power” that is already replacing “the traditional,
hierarchical organization of economic and political power.”44 Lester R.
Brown advocates for “greater local self-reliance.”45 This is not to say
that the big and the centralized could not have their place in a
sustainable society; rather, it is a repudiation of the idea that society
must always have the centralized and large-scale technologies as
default modus operandi.
The sustainability movement generally functions with all four of
these assumptions in mind, although, of course, there is broad
debate about the specifics. Indeed, there is a surprising range of
viewpoints and conflicts that occur within the umbrella concept of
sustainability, as even the small sampling of literature and theories
discussed above suggests. This book will examine the contours and
complexities of how these concepts evolved and the origin of and
relationship between historical ideas and the current sustainability
movement.
I offer two final points. First, sustainability is not just another
term for environmentalism, nor is the history of sustainability the
same thing as environmental history.46 Sustainists are trained to look
at complex systems and find relationships between society,
economy, and the natural world. Sustainability and environmentalism
share a common history to a certain point, but the sources of
sustainability go well beyond the canon of thinkers who have shaped
the environmental movement (John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel
Carson, Barry Commoner, etc.). The history of sustainability is as
much social, political, and economic as it is environmental history.
Second, though the idea of sustainability has taken shape in
many parts of the world and the sustainability movement is today
fully globalized, this book deals primarily with Europe and North
America. This is not quite a global history. Non-“Western” societies
such as the Highlanders of New Guinea, the Iroquois Confederacy,
China, and Japan appear, but the focus is on the way in which
sustainability emerged as a constructive reaction to unsustainable
European and colonial industrial society.47 As noted above,
sustainability presupposes an industrial present that cannot endure—
the realization that current approaches will not hold up over time. It
is essentially a response to perceived deficiencies within modernity
and industrialism—“progress” defined as consumption, the
population explosion, environmental degradation, economic growth
at the expense of ecosystems, the extinction of species, extreme
social inequality, unstable economic systems, pollution, a throwaway
society, and so on. An inherently sustainable society does not need
an explicit sustainability movement. This is a book for and about
societies that are looking to restore balance and create stability.
Industrial societies can never go back to some idealized, pre-
industrial ecotopia. But by studying the history and development of
the sustainability movement, we can chart a path to a more
sustainable future.
 Chapter 1

Sources of Sustainability in the Early Modern

World

This chapter begins in the period that historians of Europe and the
Atlantic world call “early modernity” (seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries). It could have begun in the Middle Ages, with the hunting
reserves and protected forests established by European rulers in
Venice and elsewhere. It could start with an analysis of indigenous
societies, from Easter Island to the Maya, that failed to live
sustainably and experienced some form of demographic collapse. It
could even begin in antiquity, with Pliny the Elder and his
encyclopedic Natural History that tells us so much about Roman
conceptions of the natural world.
But we begin in the early modern period because of the clear
linkages between the modern sustainability movement of the
twenty-first century and the consciousness and practices that
developed in early modernity. After all, the concept of “sustainability”
was given a name in the early eighteenth century by a Saxon
bureaucrat who coined the term “Nachhaltigkeit” to describe the
practice of harvesting timber continuously from the same forest.
Indeed, sustained yield forestry took shape at this time not only in
Western Europe but also in Japan, around other parts of Asia, and
on colonial islands in both the West and East Indies. The practice of
exploiting forests sustainably was but one indication of an incipient
awareness about the value of living within biophysical limits and the
need to counteract resource overconsumption. Many documents that
survive from this period demonstrate that it was possible to have at
least a rudimentary idea about the complex relationship between
social well-being, the economy, and the natural world. That is, the
“systems thinking” of sustainability—the method of studying
complex, interrelated systems—clearly has roots that stretch back to
this largely pre-industrialized world.
In 1700, the global population of Homo sapiens was somewhere
between 600 million and 650 million. Beijing might have approached
a population of 1 million, which would have constituted a megacity
at the time, but most “cities” had fewer than 50,000 inhabitants.
Paris had been the largest city in Europe for some time, but London,
with its 575,000 souls, surpassed Paris around this time and
continued to swell. Still, most people on the planet lived either in
rural areas or in small settlements, even in fairly urbanized areas
such as Europe. Countless peasants would never glimpse a city.
There was no electricity, no telephones, no internal combustion
engines, no synthetic polymers, no fossil-fueled flying machines, and
no mass media, although there were a few newspapers and journals
in Europe and elsewhere.
Certainly, the pastoralist, hunter-gatherer, and agricultural
societies that dotted the globe all impacted the environments in
which they lived and worked. But in a world before industrial
manufacturing, plastic, nuclear waste, and synthetic chemicals,
pollution rates and environmental degradation were, on the whole,
considerably less severe than they are today.1 Based on the
pioneering work of William Cronon and other environmental
historians, though, we know that even pre-industrial indigenous
societies altered the landscapes that sustained them. Nature was not
in a state of static perfection before the arrival of European axes and
industry. As Cronon writes, “There has been no timeless wilderness
in a state of perfect change-lessness.”2 Indigenous societies in the
Americas used strategic felling for hunting (and for agriculture) and
practiced widespread agroforestry and other forms of ecosystem
cultivation.3 Even pre-industrial, medieval Europe faced the growing
problem of woodland loss. England was overwhelmingly deforested
by the thirteenth century, and in fact deforestation was already a
problem in many ancient societies, including Greece and the Roman
Republic.4 One recent estimate places woodland at only 16% of the
total land in eighteenth-century France, a country that had once
been covered in thick forests.5 Most of the world, especially the
Northern Hemisphere, had to cope with the effects of the Little Ice
Age that lasted from the fourteenth century to the early nineteenth
century, which created erratic temperatures and affected agricultural
production.6
All of this is to say that the world before the Industrial Revolution
had its ecological problems, too, even if they paled in comparison to
the crisis faced by the planet today. Many societies before the
nineteenth century dealt with deforestation, desertification, soil
erosion, silted rivers, urban air pollution, drought, and intermittent
crop failure. As Jared Diamond has argued in his best-selling book,
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, a whole series of
global societies collapsed as a result, in part, of overstressing local
environments. Diamond formulates a five-point framework to
understand the collapse of such historical societies as those living on
Easter Island, Pitcairn Island, and Henderson Island (all located in
the South Pacific), the Anasazi Native Americans who lived in
present-day New Mexico, the Maya civilization of the Yucatán and
surrounding areas, and the Vikings who populated southern
Greenland. The five factors that he identifies include environmental
damage, climate change (man-made or non-man-made), hostile
neighbors, friendly trade partners (or lack thereof), and the society’s
response to its environmental problems.7 The final point is an
important one because reacting to a problem requires that a society
or part of it first acknowledge its own faults. A certain consciousness
needs to develop before anything can be done to get off the path of
unsustainability.
It is the contention of this chapter that at least some early
modern pre-industrialized (or barely industrialized) societies—or
some elements within those societies—recognized the patterns of
what we would today call “unsustainability” and began to react to
those patterns with constructive criticism and innovative practices.
What’s so striking about the eighteenth century, especially in Europe,
is that it witnessed the genesis of an unsustainable, growth-based,
industrialized society as well as a powerful set of practices and
counter-discourses that charted a different path. To be clear, this is
not to imply that England, France, or the Germanic states were (or
are) sustainable societies simply because they began to recognize
and respond to some unsustainable practices. Although none of
those countries have collapsed in the way that Norse settlements did
in Greenland, they also shouldn’t be romanticized as ecotopias. Paris
and London both had terrible air pollution from the burning of wood,
and the rise of coal heating in the seventeenth century only made
things worse.8 Further, the French and English, after deforesting and
exhausting their own lands, simply seized and exploited untapped
resources in the colonial world.9 These complexities notwithstanding,
changing attitudes in early modernity toward humans and their
relationship to the natural world have served as intellectual sources
of the modern sustainability movement, even if they did not succeed
in placing “advanced” economies on the path to ecotopia.
In a sense, then, we have inherited from early modernity two
different yet sinuously interconnected cultural legacies. On the one
hand, the eighteenth century was the period that witnessed the birth
of the Industrial Revolution, modern growth-based economics, and
what has recently been termed the “consumer revolution.” Although
new machines and techniques had a limited impact on the economy
before the nineteenth century, modern manufacturing came into
being in the century before 1800, as steam engines and other
machines began to supplant animal labor and as factory-based wage
labor gradually replaced the long-tenured artisanal workshop
system. In England and America, inventors produced new machines
that would eventually revolutionize the global economy and change
the course of human history. The spinning jenny (1764), the steam
engine (1769), the water frame (1771), the power loom (1785), the
cotton gin (1794), and other inventions paved the way to modern
forms of transportation and industrial production. In economics, the
classical theory of capitalism took shape in the pages of Adam
Smith’s 1776 An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of
Nations and in the writings (and governmental policies) of the
French physiocrats, such as Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, who
defended the idea of free markets, economic growth, and a strict
division of labor that spurred productivity.
In terms of consumption, British historians have narrowed in on
the period after 1690 as the beginning of a “consumer revolution,” in
which Europeans grew rich off of colonial trade and began to
consume culture and products (coffee, tobacco, sugar, textiles, fine
goods) on a mass scale.10 Of course, much of this colonial wealth
and economic growth was rooted in slave labor, and perhaps 50% of
all the slaves taken from Africa in the early modern period left in the
eighteenth century, transported across oceans on French, British,
and Portuguese ships.11 Colonial capitalism also put on display the
animosity (or at least apathy) toward the natural world felt by many
Europeans, especially on tropical islands where forests were
wantonly “subdued” and cleared for the sake of planting valuable
cash crops. It was all part of the process called “ecological
imperialism” by Alfred Crosby.12
On the other hand, the eighteenth century is the source of many
of the embryonic ideas that today inform the sustainability
movement. This is the period in which abolitionism formed as a
powerful critique of slavery and the concept of human rights
circulated widely in the Atlantic world, taking center stage in what
are today called the Atlantic revolutions: the American Revolution,
the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and significant
uprisings in the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium), the Netherlands,
Ireland, and elsewhere.13 Where would the concept of social justice
be without abolitionism and these democratic revolutions? Moreover,
while the eighteenth century is remembered as the period in which
classical economics took shape, there were nonetheless critics of
economic liberalism in the later part of the century who were able to
correlate changing economic policies to social and “environmental”
problems. To be sure, a critique of economic growth did not appear
out of thin air in the late twentieth century (see chapter 4).
Furthermore, not everyone endorsed the new consumer society, and
many moralists in Europe took aim at the vanity and decadence that
came with materialism, greed, and consumption. There were even
those who connected greed and overconsumption to deforestation.
Indeed, this is the period in which forestry became a legitimate
science, woodland overconsumption became a widely recognized
problem, and sustained yield forestry became an official policy of
governments in many parts of the world. This is also the period in
which views of the natural world underwent a conceptual revolution,
at least in the Western world, as religious conceptions of a “created”
Earth gave way to a more secular Enlightenment perspective that
viewed the natural world as inert and in need of domination, but
ultimately useful, governed by natural law, and knowable in
measurable, systematic ways. Finally, this is the period in which
some critics of urbanism and scientific progress, such as the Swiss
philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, took to the woods and began to
craft a kind of “natural religion” that valorized the natural world and
simple living.
These two legacies of early modernity are neither simplistic nor
even mutually exclusive. The period that we think of today as the
Enlightenment is fraught with contradiction, and it isn’t so easy to
determine what one might consider the “good” versus the “bad”
elements of this complex heritage. To be clear, there was no explicit
sustainability movement (or even environmental movement) in the
eighteenth-century Western world. Nor was there a holistic
conception of ecology, as there was in many of the indigenous
societies that were in the process of being brutalized by European
imperialists. Moreover, the people and documents studied in this
chapter exhibited an anthropocentrism typical of the period; few if
any Europeans wrote of the “rights of nature” or even cared about
nature on its own terms, exterior to the needs of humans, who were
still seen as separate from and dominant over nature. When
deforestation was criticized, it was on the grounds that it was bad
for mankind. But at the very least it was beginning to be seen as a
serious problem by some. Even though the views and needs of these
people differed from our own, we can locate in this period many of
the disparate “sources” that have contributed to the making of
sustainability, which in many ways is a conscious attempt to “return”
not to pre-industrial society per se, but to a time when humans
tread more lightly upon the Earth.
In Europe and its settler societies, the intellectual and cultural
movements today known as the Scientific Revolution (late sixteenth
to late seventeenth centuries) and the Enlightenment (late
seventeenth to late eighteenth centuries) ushered in a period of
intense interest in the natural world. There was no single event that
triggered this widespread curiosity in nature and “natural
philosophy,” as science was called at the time, but rather a gradual
development of disciplines gave shape and expression to that
curiosity: chemistry, physics, mechanics, hydraulics, natural history
(botany and biology), forestry, zoology, geology, anatomy, and so on.
The new ideas associated with these disciplines eventually displaced
the long-suffering Aristotelian paradigm of the natural world, which
was buttressed by Galen’s medicine and Ptolemy’s astronomy and
which had been endorsed and modified by the medieval Catholic
Church. The followers of Aristotle throughout the Middle Ages had
viewed the Earth as the center of the universe, assumed the
existence of different kinds of matter, projected anthropomorphic
meaning onto living organisms, and argued that the principles that
governed bodies in outer space differed from those that governed
the earthly realm.14 But during the Scientific Revolution, a new
paradigm came into existence that viewed the cosmos in mechanistic
terms as something made up of motion and a single kind of
matter.15 There was only one set of physical laws that applied to
both the earthly and heavenly spheres. And there was now a
heliocentric universe that displaced poor old Earth from the center of
it all.
This newfound interest in natural philosophy is evident in a wide
range of practices and events in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, from the paradigm-shattering books of the period,
including Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia
Mathematica (1687) that helped establish the new physics, to the
new academies of science that appeared throughout Europe and
even in the New World, the most important of which were the Royal
Society in London (1660) and the Paris Académie des sciences
(1666).16 It is also evident in the new journals dedicated to scientific
exchange that appeared as well as the menageries, natural history
cabinets (for anomalous and exotic specimens), and public displays
of scientific devices that delighted crowds in eighteenth-century
Europe.
An important aspect of this growing interest in science was that it
brought with it a reevaluation of human beings and their relationship
to the natural world. In Man and the Natural World: Changing
Attitudes in England, 1500–1800, Keith Thomas discusses the deep-
rooted Christian belief that the natural world had been created for
the benefit of humankind. Nature, in a sense, belonged to human
beings but needed to be pacified like a menacing enemy. However,
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, “some long-established
dogmas about man’s place in nature were discarded [and] new
sensibilities arose towards animals, plants and landscape.”17 The
new worldview that developed largely did away with the idea that
humans were created and instead considered humans part of the
“economy of nature.” This is not to imply that anthropocentrism
suddenly disappeared or that secular views suddenly eradicated
religious ones. Even though humanity was now thought of, by many,
as a part of nature, humans still held an exalted and dignified place
within the natural order.18 Nor did it mean a sudden admiration for
nature on the part of most natural philosophers. René Descartes
wrote of the need for humans to become “masters and possessors
of nature.”19 Francis Bacon, the great propagandist of scientific utility
in the seventeenth century, rallied humans to “conquer and subdue”
nature, echoing the dictum in Genesis (1:28) to “replenish the earth
and subdue it.”20 Likewise, the academies that Bacon helped dream
up saw their role as creating knowledge that enabled the state to
dominate nature. Indeed, Bacon spoke often of the relationship
between “power” and “science.”
Another consequence of this changing worldview was that it
emptied the natural world of its magical or supernatural qualities and
engendered the common belief that nature was inert and soulless. It
was now an object of rational analysis rather than a source of awe
and spiritual reckoning. Nature was something to be poked at,
prodded, dissected, tortured for its secrets, and put on display. The
dominant view was that there was no harm in destroying the natural
world since it “felt” nothing and had no inherent rights, feelings, or
recognitions. Adam Smith, along with many others at the time, saw
nature as “no more than a storehouse of raw materials for man’s
ingenuity.”21 For the natural philosophers of the eighteenth century—
the remaining alchemists notwithstanding—the natural world was
not an obscure and magical thing but rather something mundane
and decipherable. For instance, the Baron d’Holbach, a radical
atheist based in Paris, characterized nature as a giant unfeeling
machine that could be understood through scientific analysis.22
The desire to study and make sense of nature is most apparent in
the many taxonomies and natural histories that were produced in
this period. The multivolume Histoire naturelle (1749–1789) of the
great French naturalist Buffon, a catalog of all known animals and
minerals, became the standard text for the biologists and geologists
of that era.23 The Swedish botanist and zoologist Carl Linnaeus
invented modern binomial nomenclature and taxonomy in a series of
publications between the 1730s and 1770s, and his system remains
the structural foundation of the life sciences today.24 The first
modern encyclopedia also came into being in this period. Denis
Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert edited a famous Encyclopédie
(1751–1772; 17 volumes of text and 11 of plates), which solicited
articles from dozens of contributing specialists and aimed to be a
cutting-edge repository of all known knowledge.25 By the end of the
century, it seemed clear to many Europeans that nature had been
fully exposed, categorized, and basically figured out.
From a certain perspective, then, it’s not hard to see how the
Enlightenment might have spurred on heartless environmental
destruction and the expansion of a slave-based colonial empire, and
that is certainly a reasonable argument to make. But the shift in
worldview in this period also created the possibility for dissenting
viewpoints. Many intellectuals and social observers used natural
philosophy to criticize waste, degradation, social injustice, and
illogical governmental policies. According to Richard Grove, “The
growing interest in mechanistic analysis and comparison actually
enabled rational and measured conservationist response.”26 Again,
the divided legacy of the Enlightenment is made apparent.
One place to follow this clash of values is in the pages of Donald
Worster’s Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. Worster
employs two categories to describe competing views of the natural
world in the eighteenth century: “Imperialism” and “Arcadi-anism.”
Linnaeus was the archetypal Imperialist who supported mankind’s
apparent domination over nature and viewed flora and fauna as little
more than objects of dispassionate analysis. This was the prevailing
view of the time. The Arcadians, by contrast, were exemplified by an
English parson-naturalist named Gilbert White, who sought a
“simple, humble life for man with the aim of restoring him to a
peaceful coexistence with other organisms.”27 White saw harmony
and complex systems within the natural world and clearly had a
deep reverence for all living beings.
What’s striking is that both the Imperialists and the Arcadians
contributed to the formation of ecological concepts—Linnaeus wrote
of an “oeconomy of nature” and Gilbert White argued that “nature is
a great economist,” and thus both factions used the circulation of
resources within human society as a metaphor for the cycles and
systems within the natural world.28 Moreover, both the Imperialists
and the Arcadians at times mobilized knowledge of the natural world
to counteract unsustainable environmental practices. Worster is
therefore correct in arguing that multiple ecological viewpoints
developed in the eighteenth century, well before “oecologie” became
a term in 1866. The great outpouring of ideas and perspectives
unleashed by the Enlightenment included many that valued the
notion of humans living within their natural limits, even if many of
the thinkers in this period cared little about nature in and of itself.
This early ecological consciousness nonetheless became a powerful
vantage point from which to attack human destructiveness and
animosity toward the natural world.
 In looking at the emergence of sustainability in early modernity, it
becomes clear that the concept has roots in forestry. This is not a
coincidence. In the period before the widespread use of fossil fuels,
many world societies relied heavily on trees for fuel and other needs,
and deforestation brought with it the specter of societal collapse.
The forest was life sustaining, and because of the immediate
relationship that pre-industrialized peoples had to this natural
system, it was relatively easy to recognize its value and the effects
of misuse. It is no exaggeration to say that, in Europe, the economy
and social well-being were wholly dependent on the continued
existence of woodland and a steady supply of forest resources.29
Urbanites and peasants needed wood to heat homes, build fences,
and construct buildings. Without wood, most people would have
frozen during cold winters, and the cooking of meals in most places
would have been nearly impossible. Farmers and ranchers turned to
woodlands for a wide range of needs, from nuts, mushrooms, and
berries that supplemented diets, to twigs and undergrowth that
grazing animals used as fodder. Countless industries needed a
steady supply of wood, too. Glue makers transformed tree sap into
adhesives. Tanners and glassmakers and charcoal makers consumed
vast quantities of timber and often contributed very directly to local
deforestation.30 European monarchies also valued woodland but for
different reasons. For the elite, forests were important as hunting
sites and places of leisure, but even more important was the fact
that navies needed a constant supply of dense wood, especially oak
and elm, to build armed ships. It took 2,000 to 3,000 suitable oaks
to build a large warship.
Not only were forests recognized as vitally important, but there
was a growing realization from the late seventeenth century onward
that woodland was shrinking quickly, and that this was a problem
with widespread consequences. Historical and ecological data show
quite clearly that forests were, in fact, disappearing in this period.
Per capita consumption rates stayed level in most places, but the
European population grew considerably in the 1700s, creating new
stresses on woodland resources. (In France, for instance, the
population grew from 20 million in 1700 to 28 million in the 1790s.)
Some wood-reliant industries expanded in this period, too. Coal
began to be used more frequently in some parts of Europe in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but its use seems to have
slowed the rate of deforestation only late in the century or after
1800. In Deforesting the Earth, Michael Williams estimates that
Europeans removed an astounding 25 million hectares of woodland
and 40 million hectares of grassland between 1700 and 1850.31
We know that people from all social classes saw deforestation as
a problem, but it was the literate elite who left the most detailed
evidence of this incipient ecological consciousness. One of the first
consciousness-raisers was John Evelyn, an English aristocrat and a
founding member of the Royal Society. His 1664 Sylva, or a
Discourse of Forest-Trees, and the Propagation of Timber in His
Majesty’s Dominions, deplored the woodland loss that plagued
England in the seventeenth century. This best-selling book offered
an encyclopedic description of tree species and contemporary
practices for repopulating forests and planting, transplanting,
pruning, and felling trees. It’s also an impassioned plea for the
nobility to replant and afforest the landscape.32 Although Evelyn’s
main interest was maintaining naval and state power through energy
independence, his book had a far-reaching impact on silviculture
practices within and beyond the British Isles. His book inspired an
act meant to reforest the Royal Forest of Dean, for instance, and he
motivated aristocratic landowners to plant “millions” of trees on
estates throughout England.33 Grober suggests that Evelyn’s book
brings us “very close . . . to the vocabulary of our modern
sustainability discourse.”34
A second “source” within forestry came from the administrative
work of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, a French commoner who managed to
climb the bureaucratic ladder to the post of Minister of Finances
during the reign of Louis XIV. Colbert wanted to bring to forestry the
same protectionist, corporatist management philosophy that he had
brought to trade policies and guild regulation. In 1669, Colbert
organized and reformulated all the forest-related decrees that had
been promulgated in France since the thirteenth century, issuing an
all-encompassing Ordonnance sur le fait des Eaux et Forêts that
would govern forest policy until the nineteenth century.35 This
hugely influential forest code became the model of “rationalized”
state forestry for governments all over Europe and beyond. Even
though Colbert’s decree might have slowed deforestation in certain
areas, its ultimate aim was to ensure enough wood for the navy and
to protect the rights of forest owners (including the monarchy and
the Catholic Church) against illegal poaching, grazing, and logging.
As a result, the Ordonnance created more problems than it solved,
triggering more violence and conflict between peasants and state
agents and facilitating inconsistent forest management policies,
which enabled logging practices that drove deforestation.36
Given all this, Worster would probably categorize Colbert as an
Imperialist—he was also an actual imperialist via his role in the
mercantile-and-imperial French East India Company—since he cared
relatively little about nature itself. Nature was merely a lump of inert
matter meant to benefit humankind, and especially the needs of the
state. Old-growth forests were protected because the crown needed
them. What’s more, the French monarchy actually accelerated the
rate of deforestation by selling off royal forests, strengthening the
power of the nobility to exploit forest resources, and encouraging
forest clearance (for agriculture) in the 1760s, when the physiocrats
entered the government.37 As Grober notes, “On the eve of the
Revolution in 1789, there was less woodland in France than in
1669.”38 Thus, Colbert’s attempt at protecting forests and
implementing a comprehensive forest management system met with
mixed results in the early modern period, and the real importance in
this code, for those interested in the history of sustainability, lies
with the future treatises and codes that Colbert helped to inspire.
One of those forest treatises that owed quite a lot to Colbert was
Hans Carl von Carlowitz’s 1713 Sylvicultura oeconomica, oder
haußwirthliche Nachricht und Naturmäßige Anweisung zur wilden
Baum-Zucht.39 In recent years, Carlowitz’s innovative forestry
manual has been recognized, quite rightly, as a watershed moment
in the history of sustainability.40 Carlowitz came from a land-owning
aristocratic family and worked as a royal mining administrator in the
Electorate of Saxony, one of the Germanic states that made up the
Holy Roman Empire. In his early career, he traveled to France and
England and became deeply influenced both by Colbert’s “rational”
approach to forest management and Evelyn’s aristocratic
appreciation for energy independence. As someone whose main
concern was the vast and profitable mining industry in Saxony,
where metallurgy and the mining of silver, copper, tin, and cobalt
dominated the local economy, Carlowitz turned to the study of
forests primarily because he understood that local industry relied on
a large and constant supply of timber. He thus recognized the clear
connections between the economy and local natural resources and
the fact that an industry could collapse if authorities did not address
and reverse the trend of deforestation.41
Carlowitz began to educate himself in the science of forestry only
late in his career. His famous treatise, Sylvicultura oeconomica,
which was published a year before he died, represented several
years of research and experimentation in Saxon forests. The wide-
ranging book deals with such subjects as wood shortages in Saxony,
inventions in metallurgy that could decrease fuel consumption,
Roman forestry laws that prevented the cutting of young stands,
natural causes of deforestation (storms, disease), human causes of
deforestation (industry-driven overconsumption), the collecting of
seeds, the possibility of regenerating forests, the importance of
coppicing practices, and different methods of intensive forest
cultivation. The upshot is that Carlowitz laid out the first
comprehensive strategy for sustained yield forestry, and criticized
the shortsightedness, mismanagement, and greed that had dwindled
natural resources. In the words of Grober, “Carlowitz not only
invents the word; he sketches out the entire structure of the modern
sustainability discourse.”42 Here is one of the passages where
Carlowitz states the importance of the “sustainable use”
(nachhaltende Nutzung) of woodland:
 Thus the largest art, science, industry and institution based on it [forestry]
exists in this region [Saxony]. As such, efforts must be made for the
conservation and cultivation of wood. We must aim for a continuous, resilient,
and sustainable use, because [forests] are an indispensable thing, without
which the country and its forges could not exist.43

This seemingly self-evident statement was in fact a hard-earned

realization that came about well after Germanic lands had entered a
serious fuel crisis and as wood prices continued to climb. We
shouldn’t assume that woodland loss “caused” Carlowitz to fight
back against deforestation, since many deforested societies around
1700 showed no apparent interest in resource depletion, but it’s
nonetheless clear that the idea of sustainability occurred as a
reaction to the mishandling of forests. Carlowitz’s reaction, however,
slowly became the dominant paradigm in forestry in Germanic
countries, Western Europe, and North America.
Some of the ideas that Carlowitz defended were put into practice
in the early decades of the eighteenth century: selective logging,
systematically assessing forest stands, coppicing, reforestation
efforts, and the use of peat (and later coal) as an alternative to
wood resources. In fact, Sylvicultura oeco-nomica became the
standard guidebook for forest administrators. By the late eighteenth
century, “sustainable yield forestry [had] developed into a science.”44
Deforestation rates slowed in the Holy Roman Empire as Carlowitz’s
ideas were expanded upon and implemented in universities and
forestry schools in Harz, Zillbach, and Tharandt. In the early
nineteenth century, universities in Saxony, Prussia, Nancy (Lorraine),
and elsewhere were teaching sustained yield forestry, and Germans
became the world’s leading experts in this field.45 Even in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, students came from all
over the world to study cutting-edge forestry techniques in Germany.
Gifford Pinchot, the first Chief of the US Forest Service and a crucial
figure in conservationism at the turn of the twentieth century,
conducted his early training in Germany and other parts of Europe,
bringing back to America the idea of sustained yield forestry.
 Carlowitz, too, would probably fit into the category of Imperialist.
Even though he makes the occasional comment about the beauty
and “life-giving” qualities of nature, he viewed trees essentially as
utilitarian resources.46 The same could be said of Evelyn and
Colbert, who saw nature as a collection of raw materials. But there is
a second way to classify the ecological consciousness in the
eighteenth century: between those who cared primarily about the
needs of the state and its economic and political interests (Evelyn,
Colbert, Carlowitz) and those who understood the complex value of
trees and the social ramifications of woodland loss.
For instance, numerous French writers who participated in public
essay competitions on trees and woodland loss—public writing
competitions being an important intellectual venue in the
Enlightenment—were able to identify the causes and effects of
deforestation as well as some potential solutions to the problem.
Although all of these essayists were fundamentally anthropocentric,
they possessed a dynamic consciousness of how environmental
destruction was linked to social and economic issues. Indeed, these
early systems thinkers have left us with perhaps the strongest
evidence that there was an incipient awareness of the three Es in
the eighteenth century. Grober, who has written extensively about
Carlowitz, argues that the Saxon administrator took interest in the
“three pillars” of modern sustainability, because of Carlowitz’s
occasional reference to the poor.47 However, I tend to see a greater
focus on social justice in the writings of these French essayists,
whereas Carlowitz cared about trees (environment) principally
because they were an industrial instrument (economics) that
ensured the continued wealth and power of Saxon elites (society).
The French essayists wrote first and foremost about the causes of
deforestation. They connected the dots between woodland loss and
the overconsumption of the industrial sector (especially metallurgy
and charcoal-making), the greedy timber hoarding of the wealthiest
classes in society, and illogical governmental policies that promoted
land clearance to boost the agricultural sector. The final critique was
aimed at the physiocrats, a group of free-market economists with
Another Random Scribd Document
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 OZONE.
The singular gas termed ozone has attracted a large amount of
attention from chemists and meteorologists. The vague ideas which
were formed as to its nature when as yet it had been but newly
discovered, have given place gradually to more definite views; and
though we cannot be said to have thoroughly mastered all the
difficulties which this strange element presents, yet we know already
much that is interesting and instructive.
Let us briefly consider the history of ozone.
Nine years after Priestley had discovered oxygen, Van Marum,
the electrician, noticed that when electric sparks are taken through
that gas, a peculiar odour is evolved. Most people know this odour,
since it is always to be recognized in the neighbourhood of an
electrical machine in action. In reality, it indicates the presence of
ozone in the air. But for more than half a century after Van Marum
had noticed it, it was supposed to be the “smell of electricity.”
In 1840, Schönbein began to inquire into the cause of this
peculiar odour. He presently found that it is due to some change in
the oxygen; and that it can be produced in many ways. Of these, the
simplest, and, in some respects, the most interesting, is the
following:—“Take sticks of common phosphorus, scrape them until
they have a metallic lustre, place them in this condition under a
large bell-jar, and half-cover them with water. The air in the bell-jar
is soon charged with ozone, and a large room can readily be
supplied with ozonized air by this process.”
Schönbein set himself to inquire into the properties of this new
gas, and very interesting results rewarded his researches. It became
quite clear, to begin with, that whatever ozone may be, its properties
are perfectly distinct from those of oxygen. Its power of oxidizing or
rusting metals, for example, is much greater than that which oxygen
possesses. Many metals which oxygen will not oxidize at all, even
when they are at a high temperature, submit at once to the
influence of ozone. But the power of ozone on other substances than
metals is equally remarkable. Dr. Richardson states that, when air is
so ozonized as to be only respirable for a short time, its destructive
power is such that gutta-percha and india-rubber tubings are
destroyed by merely conveying it.
The bleaching and disinfecting powers of ozone are very striking.
Schönbein was at first led to associate them with the qualities of
chlorine gas; but he soon found that they are perfectly distinct.
It had not yet been shown whether ozone was a simple or a
compound gas. If simple, of course it could be but another form of
oxygen. At first, however, the chances seemed against this view; and
there were not wanting skilful chemists who asserted that ozone was
a compound of the oxygen of the air with the hydrogen which forms
an element of the aqueous vapour nearly always present in the
atmosphere.
It was important to set this question at rest. This was
accomplished by the labours of De la Rive and Marignac, who proved
that ozone is simply another form of oxygen.
Here we touch on a difficult branch of modern chemical
research. The chemical elements being recognized as the simplest
forms of matter, it might be supposed that each element would be
unchangeable in its nature. That a compound should admit of
change, is of course a thing to be expected. If we decompose water,
for instance, into its component elements, oxygen and hydrogen, we
may look on these gases as exhibiting water to us in another form.
And a hundred instances of the sort might be adduced, in which,
either by separating the elements of a compound, or by re-arranging
them, we obtain new forms of matter without any real change of
substance. But with an element, the case, one would suppose,
should be different.
However, the physicist must take facts as he finds them; and
amongst the most thoroughly recognized chemical facts we have this
one, that elementary substances may assume different forms.
Chemists call the phenomenon allotropy. A well-known instance of
allotropy is seen in red phosphorus. Phosphorus is one of the
chemical elements; and, as every one knows, the form in which it is
usually obtained is that of a soft, yellow, semi-transparent solid,
somewhat resembling bees’ wax in consistence, poisonous, and
readily taking fire. Red phosphorus is the same element, yet differs
wholly in its properties. It is a powder, it does not readily take fire,
and it is not poisonous.
Ozone, then, is another form of oxygen. It is the only instance
yet discovered of gaseous allotropy.
And now we have to deal with the difficult and still-vexed
questions of the way in which the change from oxygen is brought
about, and the actual distinction between the two forms of the same
gas. Schönbein held that common oxygen is produced by the
combination of two special forms of oxygen—the positive and the
negative, or, as he called them, ozone and antozone. He showed
that, in certain conditions of the air, the atmospheric oxygen exhibits
qualities which are the direct reverse of those which ozone exhibits,
and are distinct from those of ordinary oxygen. In oxygen thus
negatived or antozonized, animals cannot live any more than they
can in nitrogen. The products of decomposition are not only not
destroyed as by ozone, but seem subject to preservative influences,
and speedily become singularly offensive; dead animal matter rapidly
putrefies, and wounds show a tendency to mortification.
But the theory of positive and negative forms of oxygen, though
still held by a few physicists, has gradually given way before the
advance of new and sounder modes of inquiry. It has been proved,
in the first place, that ozone is denser than ordinary oxygen. The
production of ozone is always followed by a contraction of the gas’s
volume, the contraction being greater or less according to the
amount of oxygen which has been ozonized. Regularly as the
observers—Messrs. Andrews and Tait—converted a definite
proportion of oxygen into ozone, the corresponding contraction
followed, and as regularly was the original volume of the gas
restored when, by the action of heat, the ozone was reconverted
into oxygen.
And now a very singular experiment was made by the observers,
with results which proved utterly perplexing to them. Mercury has
the power of absorbing ozone; and the experimenters thought that
if, after producing a definite contraction by the formation of ozone,
they could absorb the ozone by means of mercury, the quantity of
oxygen which remained would serve to show them how much ozone
had been formed, and thence, of course, they could determine the
density of ozone.
Suppose, for instance, that we have one hundred cubic inches of
oxygen, and that by any process we reduce it to a combination of
oxygen and ozone occupying ninety-five cubic inches. Now, if the
mercury absorbed the ozone, and we found, say, that there only
remained eighty-five cubic inches of oxygen, we could reason in this
way:—Ten cubic inches were occupied by the ozone before the
mercury absorbed it; but these correspond to fifteen cubic inches of
oxygen; hence, ozone must be denser than oxygen in the proportion
of fifteen to ten, or three to two. And whatever result might have
followed, a real absorption of the ozone by the mercury would have
satisfactorily solved the problem.
But the result actually obtained did not admit of interpretation in
this way. The apparent absorption of the ozone by the mercury, that
is, the disappearance of the ozone from the mixture, was
accompanied by no diminution of volume at all. In other words,
returning to our illustrative case, after the absorption of the ozone
from the ninety-five cubic inches occupied by the mixture, there still
remained ninety-five cubic inches of oxygen; so that it seemed as
though an evanescent volume of ozone corresponded in weight to
five cubic inches of oxygen. This solution, of course, could not be
admitted, since it made the density of ozone infinite.
The explanation of this perplexing experiment is full of interest
and instruction. The following is the account given by Mr. C. W.
Heaton (Professor of Chemistry at Charing Cross Hospital), slightly
modified, however, so that it may be more readily understood.
Modern chemists adopt, as a convenient mode of representing
the phenomena which gases exhibit, the theory that every gas,
whether elementary or compound, consists of minute molecules.
They suppose that these molecules are of equal size, and are
separated by equal intervals so long as the gas remains unchanged
in heat and density. This view serves to account for the features of
resemblance presented by all gases. The features in which gases
vary are accounted for by the theory that the molecules are
differently constituted. The molecules are supposed to be clusters of
atoms, and the qualities of a gas are assumed to depend on the
nature and arrangement of these ultimate atoms. The molecules of
some elements consist but of a single atom; the molecules of others
are formed by pairs of atoms; those of others by triplets; and so on.
Again, the molecules of compound gases are supposed to consist of
combinations of different kinds of atoms.
Now, Dr. Odling, to whom we owe the solution of the perplexing
problem described above, thus interpreted the observed
phenomena. A molecule of oxygen contains two atoms, one of ozone
contains three, and the oxidizing power of ozone depends on the
ease with which it parts with its third atom of oxygen. Thus, in the
experiment which perplexed Messrs. Andrews and Tait, the mercury
only seemed to absorb the ozone; in reality it converted the ozone
into oxygen by removing its third atom. And now we see how to
interpret such a result as we considered in our illustrative case. Five
cubic inches of oxygen gave up their atoms, each atom combining
with one of the remaining oxygen doublets, so as to form a set of
ozone triplets. Clearly, then, fifteen cubic inches of oxygen were
transformed into ozone. They now occupied but ten cubic inches; so
that the mixture, or ozonized oxygen, contained eighty-five cubic
inches of oxygen and ten of ozone. When the mercury was
introduced, it simply transformed all the ozone triplets into oxygen
doublets, by taking away the odd atom from each. It thus left ten
cubic inches of oxygen, which, with the remaining eighty-five,
constituted the ninety-five cubic inches observed to remain after the
supposed absorption of the ozone.
It follows, of course, that ozone is half as heavy again as
oxygen.
But, as Mr. Heaton remarked, “this beautiful hypothesis,
although accounting perfectly for all known facts, was yet but a
probability. One link was lacking in the chain of evidence, and that
link M. Soret has supplied by a happily devised experiment.”
Although mercury and most substances are only capable of
converting ozone into oxygen, oil of turpentine has the power of
absorbing ozone in its entirety. Thus, when the experiment was
repeated, with oil of turpentine in place of the mercury, the ozone
was absorbed, and the remaining oxygen, instead of occupying
ninety-five inches, occupied but eighty-five. After this, no doubt
could remain that Dr. Odling’s ingeniously conceived hypothesis was
the correct explanation of Messrs. Andrews and Tait’s experiment.
We recognize, then, in ozone a sort of concentrated oxygen,
with this peculiar property, that it possesses an extraordinary
readiness to part with its characteristic third atom, and so disappear
as ozone, two-thirds of its weight remaining as oxygen.
It is to this peculiarity that ozone owes the properties which
render it so important to our welfare. We are indeed, as yet, in no
position to theorize respecting this element, our knowledge of its
very existence being so recent, and our information respecting its
presence in our atmosphere being of still more recent acquisition.
Indeed, it is well remarked by Mr. Heaton, that we had, until
quite lately, no reason for confidently adopting Schönbein’s view that
ozone exists in our atmosphere. The test-papers which Schönbein
made use of turned blue under the influence of ozone, it is true, but
they were similarly influenced by other elements which are known to
exist in our atmosphere, and even the sun’s rays turned them blue.
However, Dr. Andrews has shown how the character of the air
producing the change can be further tested, so as to render it
certain that ozone only has been at work. If air which colours the
test-papers be found to lose the property after being heated, the
change can only be due to ozone, because nitrous and nitric acids
(which have the power of colouring the test-papers) would not be
removed by the heat, whereas ozone is changed by heat into
oxygen.
Once we are certain that ozone exists in the air, we must
recognize the fact that its presence cannot fail to have an important
bearing on our health and comfort; for ozone is an exceedingly
active agent, and cannot exist anywhere without setting busily to its
own proper work. What that work is, and whether it is beneficial or
deleterious to ourselves, remains to be considered.
In the first place, ozone has immense power as a disinfectant. It
decomposes the products emanating from putrefying matter more
effectually than any other known element. Perhaps the most striking
proof ever given of its qualities in this respect is that afforded by an
experiment conducted by Dr. Richardson a few years ago.
He placed a pint of blood taken from an ox in a large wide-
mouthed bottle. The blood had then coagulated, and it was left
exposed to the air until it had become entirely redissolved by the
effects of decomposition. At the end of a year the blood was put into
a stoppered bottle, and set aside for seven years. “The bottle was
then taken from its hiding-place,” says Dr. Richardson, “and an
ounce of the blood was withdrawn. The fluid was so offensive as to
produce nausea when the gases evolved from it were inhaled. It was
subjected by Dr. Wood and myself to a current of ozone. For a few
minutes the odour of ozone was destroyed by the odour of the gases
from the blood; gradually the offensive smell passed away; then the
fluid mass became quite sweet, and at last a faint odour of ozone
was detected, whereupon the current was stopped. The blood was
thus entirely deodorized; but another and most singular
phenomenon was observed. The dead blood coagulated as the
products of decomposition were removed, and this so perfectly, that
from the new clot that was formed serum exuded. Before the
experiment commenced, I had predicted on theoretical grounds that
secondary coagulation would follow on purification; and this
experiment, as well as several others afterwards performed, verified
the truth of the prediction.”
It will of course be understood that ozone, in thus acting as a
disinfectant, is transformed into oxygen. It parts with its third atom
as in the mercury experiment, and so loses its distinctive peculiarity.
Thus we might be led to anticipate the results which come next to
be considered.
Ozone has certain work to do, and in doing that work is
transmuted into oxygen. It follows, then, that where there has been
much work for ozone to do, there we shall find little ozone left in the
air. Hence, in open spaces where there is little decomposing matter,
we should expect to find more ozone than in towns or cities. This
accords with what is actually observed. And not only is it found that
country air contains more ozone than town air, but it is found that air
which has come from the sea has more ozone than even the country
air, while air in the crowded parts of large cities has no ozone at all,
nor has the air of inhabited rooms.
So far as we have gone, we might be disposed to speak
unhesitatingly in favour of the effects produced by ozone. We see it
purifying the air which would otherwise be loaded by the products of
decomposing matter, we find it present in the sea air and the
country air which we know to be so bracing and health-restoring
after a long residence in town, and we find it absent just in those
places which we look upon as most unhealthy.
Again, we find further evidence of the good effects of ozone in
the fact that cholera and other epidemics never make their dreaded
appearance in the land when the air is well supplied with ozone—or
in what the meteorologists call “the ozone-periods.” And though we
cannot yet explain the circumstance quite satisfactorily, we yet seem
justified in ascribing to the purifying and disinfecting qualities of
ozone our freedom at those times from epidemics to which
cleanliness and good sanitary regulations are notedly inimical.
But there is a reverse side to the picture. And as we described
an experiment illustrating the disinfecting qualities of ozone before
describing the good effects of the element, we shall describe an
experiment illustrating certain less pleasing qualities of ozone, before
discussing the deleterious influences which it seems capable of
exerting.
Dr. Richardson found that when the air of a room was so loaded
with ozone as to be only respirable with difficulty, animals placed in
the room were affected in a very singular manner. “In the first
place,” he says, “all the symptoms of nasal catarrh and of irritation
of the mucous membranes of the nose, the mouth, and the throat
were rapidly induced. Then followed free secretion of saliva and
profuse action of the skin—perspiration. The breathing was greatly
quickened, and the action of the heart increased in proportion.”
When the animals were suffered to remain yet longer within the
room, congestion of the lungs followed, and the disease called by
physicians “congestive bronchitis” was set up.
A very singular circumstance was noticed also as to the effects
of ozone on the different orders of animals. The above-mentioned
effects, and others which accompanied them, the description of
which would be out of place in these pages, were developed more
freely in carnivorous than in herbivorous animals. Rats, for example,
were much more easily influenced by ozone than rabbits were.
The results of Dr. Richardson’s experiments prepare us to hear
that ozone-periods, though characterized by the absence of certain
diseases, bring with them their own forms of disease. Apoplexy,
epilepsy, and other similar diseases seem peculiarly associated with
the ozone-periods, insomuch that eighty per cent. of the deaths
occurring from them take place on days when ozone is present in
the air in larger quantities than usual. Catarrh, influenza, and
affections of the bronchial tubes, also affect the ozone-periods.
We see, then, that we have much yet to learn respecting ozone
before we can pronounce definitively whether it is more to be
welcomed or dreaded. We must wait until the researches which are
in progress have been carried out to their conclusion, and perhaps
even then further modes of inquiry will have to be pursued before
we can form a definite opinion.
 DEW.
There are few phenomena of common occurrence which have
proved more perplexing to philosophers than those which attend the
deposition of dew. Every one is familiar with these phenomena, and
in very early times observant men had noticed them; yet it is but
quite recently that the true theory of dew has been put forward and
established. This theory affords a striking evidence of the value of
careful and systematic observation applied even to the simplest
phenomena of nature.
It was observed, in very early times, that dew is only formed on
clear nights, when, therefore, the stars are shining. It was natural,
perhaps, though hardly philosophical, to conclude that dew is
directly shed down upon the earth from the stars; accordingly, we
find the reference of dew to stellar influences among the earliest
theories propounded in explanation of the phenomenon.
A theory somewhat less fanciful, but still depending on supposed
stellar influences, was shortly put forward. It was observed that dew
is only formed when the atmosphere is at a low temperature; or,
more correctly, when the air is at a much lower temperature than
has prevailed during the daytime. Combining this peculiarity with the
former ancient philosophers reasoned in the following manner: Cold
generates dew, and dew appears only when the skies are clear—that
is, when the stars are shining; hence it follows that the stars
generate cold, and thus lead indirectly to the formation of dew.
Hence arose the singular theory, that as the sun pours down heat
upon the earth, so the stars (and also the moon and planets) pour
down cold.
 Nothing is more common—we may note in passing—than this
method of philosophizing, especially in all that concerns weather-
changes; and perhaps it would be impossible to find a more signal
instance of the mistakes into which men are likely to fall when they
adopt this false method of reasoning; for, so far is it from being true
that the stars shed cold upon the earth, that the exact reverse is the
case. It has been established by astronomers and physicists that an
important portion of the earth’s heat-supply is derived from the
stars.
Following on these fanciful speculations came Aristotle’s theory
of dew—celebrated as one of the most remarkable instances of the
approximation which may sometimes be made to the truth by clever
reasoning on insufficient observations. For we must not fall into the
mistake of supposing, as many have done, that Aristotle framed
hypotheses without making observations; indeed, there has seldom
lived a philosopher who has made more observations than he did.
His mistake was that he extended his observations too widely, not
making enough on each subject. He imagined that, by a string of
syllogisms, he could make a few supply the place of many
observations.
Aristotle added two important facts to our knowledge respecting
dew—namely, first, that dew is only formed in serene weather; and
secondly, that it is not formed on the summits of mountains. Modern
observations show the more correct statement of the case to be that
dew is seldom formed either in windy weather or on the tops of
mountains. Now, Aristotle reasoned in a subtle and able manner on
these two observations. He saw that dew must be the result of
processes which are interfered with when the air is agitated, and
which do not extend high above the earth’s surface; he conjectured,
therefore, that dew is simply caused by the discharge of vapour from
the air. “Vapour is a mixture,” he said, “of water and heat, and as
long as water can get a supply of heat, vapour rises. But vapour
cannot rise high, or the heat would get detached from it; and vapour
cannot exist in windy weather, but becomes dissipated. Hence, in
high places, and in windy weather, dew cannot be formed for want
of vapour.” He derided the notion that the stars and moon cause the
precipitation of dew. “On the contrary, the sun,” he said, “is the
cause; since its heat raises the vapour, from which the dew is
formed when that heat is no longer present to keep up the vapour.”
Amidst much that is false, there is here a good deal that is
sound. The notion that heat is some substance which floats up the
vapour, and may become detached from it in high or windy places, is
of course incorrect. So also is the supposition that the dew is
produced by the fall of condensed vapour as the heat passes away.
Nor is it correct to say that the absence of the sun causes the
condensation of vapour, since, as we shall presently see, the cold
which causes the deposition of dew results from more than the mere
absence of the sun. But, in pointing out that the discharge of vapour
from the air, owing to loss of heat, is the true cause of the
deposition of dew, Aristotle expressed an important truth. It was
when he attempted to account for the discharge that he failed. It will
be observed, also, that his explanation does not account for the
observed fact that dew is only formed in clear weather.
Aristotle’s views did not find acceptance among the Greeks or
Romans; they preferred to look on the moon, stars, and planets as
the agents which cause the deposition of dew. “This notion,” says a
modern author, “was too beautiful for a Greek to give up, and the
Romans could not do better than follow the example of their
masters.”
In the middle ages, despite the credit attached to Aristotle’s
name, those who cultivated the physical sciences were unwilling to
accept his views; for the alchemists (who alone may be said to have
been students of nature) founded their hopes of success in the
search for the philosopher’s stone, the elixir vitæ, and the other
objects of their pursuit, on occult influences supposed to be
exercised by the celestial bodies. It was unlikely, therefore, that they
would willingly reject the ancient theory which ascribed dew to lunar
and stellar radiations.
 But at length Baptista Porta adduced evidence which justified
him in denying positively that the moon or stars exercise any
influence on the formation of dew. He discovered that dew is
sometimes deposited on the inside of glass panes; and again, that a
bell-glass placed over a plant in cold weather is more copiously
covered with dew within than without; nay, he observed that even
some opaque substances show dew on their under surface when
none appears on the upper. Yet, singularly enough, Baptista Porta
rejected that part of Aristotle’s theory which was alone correct. He
thought his observations justified him in looking on dew as
condensed—not from vapour, as Aristotle thought—but from the air
itself.
But now a new theory of dew began to be supported. We have
seen that not only the believers in stellar influence, but Aristotle
also, looked on dew as falling from above. Porta’s experiments were
opposed to this view. It seemed rather as if dew rose from the
earth. Observation also showed that the amount of dew obtained at
different heights from the ground diminishes with the height. Hence,
the new theorists looked upon dew as an exhalation from the
ground and from plants—a fine steam, as it were, rising upwards,
and settling principally on the under surfaces of objects.
But this view, like the others, was destined to be overthrown.
Muschenbroek, when engaged in a series of observations intended
to establish the new view, made a discovery which has a very
important bearing on the theory of dew: he found that, instead of
being deposited with tolerable uniformity upon different substances,
—as falling rain is, for instance, and as the rising rain imagined by
the new theorists ought to be,—dew forms very much more freely
on some substances than on others.
Here was a difficulty which long perplexed physicists. It
appeared that dew neither fell from the sky nor arose from the
earth. The object itself on which the dew was formed seemed to
play an important part in determining the amount of deposition.
 At length it was suggested that Aristotle’s long-neglected
explanation might, with a slight change, account for the observed
phenomena. The formation of dew was now looked upon as a
discharge of vapour from the air, this discharge not taking place
necessarily upwards or downwards, but always from the air next to
the object. But it was easy to test this view. It was understood that
the coldness of the object, as compared with the air, was a
necessary element in the phenomenon. It followed, that if a cold
object is suddenly brought into warm air, there ought to be a
deposition of moisture upon the object. This was found to be the
case. Any one can readily repeat the experiment. If a decanter of
ice-cold water is brought into a warm room, in which the air is not
dry—a crowded room, for example—the deposition of moisture is
immediately detected by the clouding of the glass. But there is, in
fact, a much simpler experiment. When we breathe, the moisture in
the breath generally continues in the form of vapour. But if we
breathe upon a window-pane, the vapour is immediately condensed,
because the glass is considerably colder than the exhaled air.
But although this is the correct view, and though physicists had
made a noteworthy advance in getting rid of erroneous notions, yet
a theory of dew still remained to be formed; for it was not yet
shown how the cold, which causes the deposition of dew, is itself
occasioned. The remarkable effects of a clear sky and serene
weather in encouraging the formation of dew, were also still
unaccounted for. On the explanation of these and similar points, the
chief interest of the subject depends. Science owes the elucidation
of these difficulties to Dr. Wells, a London physician, who studied the
subject of dew in the commencement of the present century. His
observations were made in a garden three miles from Blackfriars
Bridge.
Wells exposed little bundles of wool, weighing, when dry, ten
grains each, and determined by their increase in weight the amount
of moisture which had been deposited upon them. At first, he
confined himself to comparing the amount of moisture collected on
different nights. He found that although it was an invariable rule that
cloudy nights were unfavourable to the deposition of dew, yet that
on some of the very clearest and most serene nights, less dew was
collected than on other occasions. Hence it became evident that
mere clearness was not the only circumstance which favoured the
deposition of dew. In making these experiments, he was struck by
results which appeared to be anomalous. He soon found that these
anomalies were caused by any obstructions which hid the heavens
from his wool-packs: such obstructions hindered the deposition of
dew. He tried a crucial experiment. Having placed a board on four
props, he laid a piece of wool on the board, and another under it.
During a clear night, he found that the difference in the amount of
dew deposited on the two pieces of wool was remarkable: the upper
one gained fourteen grains in weight, the lower one gained only four
grains. He made a little roof over one piece of wool, with a sheet of
pasteboard; and the increase of weight was reduced to two grains,
while a piece of wool outside the roof gained no less than sixteen
grains in weight.
Leaving these singular results unexplained for a while, Dr. Wells
next proceeded to test the temperature near his wool-packs. He
found that where dew is most copiously produced, there the
temperature is lowest. Now, since it is quite clear that the deposition
of dew was not the cause of the increased cold—for the
condensation of vapour is a process producing heat—it became quite
clear that the formation of dew is dependent on and proportional to
the loss of heat.
And now Wells was approaching the solution of the problem he
had set himself; for it followed from his observations, that such
obstructions as the propped board and the pasteboard roof kept in
the heat. It followed also, from the observed effects of clear skies,
that clouds keep in the heat. Now, what sort of heat is that which is
prevented from escaping by the interference of screens, whether
material or vaporous? There are three processes by which heat is
transmitted from one body to another,—these are, conduction,
convection, and radiation. The first is the process by which objects in
contact communicate their heat to each other, or by which the heat
in one part of a body is gradually transmitted to another part. The
second is the process by which heat is carried from one place to
another by the absolute transmission of heated matter. The third is
that process by which heat is spread out in all directions, in the
same manner as light. A little consideration will show that the last
process is that with which we are alone concerned; and this
important result flows from Dr. Wells’ experiments, that the rate of
the deposition of dew depends on the rate at which bodies part with
their heat by radiation. If the process of radiation is checked, dew is
less copiously deposited, and vice versâ.
When we consider the case of heat accompanied by light, we
understand readily enough that a screen may interfere with the
emission of radiant heat. We use a fire-screen, for instance, with the
object of producing just such an interference. But we are apt to
forget that what is true of luminous heat is true also of that heat
which every substance possesses. In fact, we do not meet with
many instances in which the effect of screens in preventing the loss
of obscure heat is very noteworthy. There are some, as the warmth
of a green-house at night, and so on; but they pass unnoticed, or
are misunderstood. It was in this way that the explanation of dew-
phenomena had been so long delayed. The very law on which it is
founded had been practically applied, while its meaning had not
been recognized. “I had often in the pride of half-knowledge,” says
Wells, “smiled at the means frequently employed by gardeners to
protect tender plants from cold, as it appeared to me impossible that
a thin mat, or any such flimsy substance, could prevent them from
attaining the temperature of the atmosphere, by which alone I
thought them liable to be injured. But when I had seen that bodies
on the surface of the earth become, during a still and serene night,
colder than the atmosphere, by radiating their heat to the heavens, I
perceived immediately a just reason for the practice which I had
before deemed useless.”
And now all the facts which had before seemed obscure were
accounted for. It had been noticed that metallic plates were often
dry when grass or wood was copiously moistened. Now, we know
that metals part unwillingly with their heat by radiation, and
therefore the temperature of a metal plate exposed in the open air is
considerably higher than that of a neighbouring piece of wood. For a
similar reason, dew is more freely deposited on grass than on gravel.
Glass, again, is a good radiator, so that dew is freely deposited on
glass objects,—a circumstance which is very annoying to the
telescopist. The remedy employed is founded on Wells’ observations
—a cylinder of tin or card, called a dew-cap, is made to project
beyond the glass, and thus to act as a screen, and prevent radiation.
We can now also interpret the effects of a clear sky. Clouds act
the part of screens, and check the emission of radiant heat from the
earth. This fact has been noticed before, but misinterpreted, by
Gilbert White of Selborne. “I have often observed,” he says, “that
cold seems to descend from above; for when a thermometer hangs
abroad on a frosty night, the intervention of a cloud shall
immediately raise the mercury ten degrees, and a clear sky shall
again compel it to descend to its former gauge.” Another singular
mistake had been made with reference to the power which clouds
possess of checking the emission of radiant heat. It had been
observed that on moonlit nights the eyes are apt to suffer in a
peculiar way, which has occasionally brought on temporary
blindness. This had been ascribed to the moon’s influence, and the
term moon-blindness had therefore been given to the affection. In
reality, the moon has no more to do with this form of blindness than
the stars have to do with the formation of dew. The absence of
clouds from the air is the true cause of the mischief. There is no
sufficient check to the radiation of heat from the eyeballs, and the
consequent chill results in temporary loss of sight, and sometimes
even in permanent injury.
Since clouds possess this important power, it is clear that while
they are present in the air there can never be a copious formation of
dew, which requires, as we have seen, a considerable fall in the
temperature of the air around the place of deposition. When the air
is clear, however, radiation proceeds rapidly, and therefore dew is
freely formed.
 But it might seem that since objects in the upper regions of the
air part with their radiant heat more freely than objects on the
ground, the former should be more copiously moistened with dew
than the latter. That the fact is exactly the reverse is thus explained.
The cold which is produced by the radiation of heat from objects
high in the air is communicated to the surrounding air, which,
growing heavier, descends towards the ground, its place being
supplied by warmer air. Thus the object is prevented from reducing
the air in its immediate neighbourhood to so low a temperature as
would be attained if this process of circulation were checked. Hence,
a concave vessel placed below an object high in air, would serve to
increase the deposition of dew by preventing the transfer of the
refrigerated air. We are not aware that the experiment has ever been
tried, but undoubtedly it would have the effect we have described.
An object on the ground grows cold more rapidly, because the
neighbouring air cannot descend after being chilled, but continues in
contact with the object; also cold air is continually descending from
the neighbourhood of objects higher in air which are parting with
their radiant heat, and the cold air thus descending takes the place
of warmer air, whose neighbourhood might otherwise tend to check
the loss of heat in objects on the ground.
Here, also, we recognize the cause of the second peculiarity
detected by Aristotle—namely, that dew is only formed copiously in
serene weather. When there is wind, it is impossible that the
refrigerated air around an object which is parting with its radiant
heat, can remain long in contact with the object. Fresh air is
continually supplying the place of the refrigerated air, and thus the
object is prevented from growing so cold as it otherwise would.
In conclusion, we should wish to point out the important
preservative influence exercised during the formation of dew. If the
heat which is radiated from the earth, or from objects upon it,
during a clear night, were not repaired in any way, the most serious
injury would result to vegetation. For instance, if the sun raised no
vapour during the day, so that when night came on the air was
perfectly dry, and thus the radiant heat passed away into celestial
space without compensation, not a single form of vegetation could
retain its life during the bitter cold which would result. But consider
what happens. The sun’s heat, which has been partly used up during
the day in supplying the air with aqueous vapour, is gradually given
out as this vapour returns to the form of water. Thus the process of
refrigeration is effectually checked, and vegetation is saved from
destruction. There is something very beautiful in this. During the
day, the sun seems to pour forth his heat with reckless profusion,
yet all the while it is being silently stored up; during the night, again,
the earth seems to be radiating her heat too rapidly into space, yet
all the while a process is going on by which the loss of heat is
adequately compensated. Every particle of dew which we brush from
the blades of grass, as we take our morning rambles, is an evidence
of the preservative action of nature.
 THE LEVELLING POWER OF RAIN.
It has been recognized, ever since geology has become truly a
science, that the two chief powers at work in remodelling the earth’s
surface, are fire and water. Of these powers one is in the main
destructive, and the other preservative. Were it not for the earth’s
vulcanian energies, there can be no question that this world would
long since have been rendered unfit for life,—at least of higher types
than we recognize among sea creatures. For at all times igneous
causes are at work, levelling the land, however slowly; and this not
only by the action of sea-waves at the border-line between land and
water, but by the action of rain and flood over inland regions.
Measuring the destructive action of water by what goes on in the
lifetime of a man, or even during many successive generations, we
might consider its effects very slight, even as on the other hand we
might underrate the effects of the earth’s internal fires, were we to
limit our attention to the effects of upheaval and of depression (not
less preservative in the long run) during a few hundreds or
thousands of years. As Lyell has remarked in his “Principles of
Geology,” “our position as observers is essentially unfavourable when
we endeavour to estimate the nature and magnitude of the changes
now in progress. As dwellers on the land, we inhabit about a fourth
part of the surface; and that portion is almost exclusively a theatre
of decay, and not of reproduction. We know, indeed, that new
deposits are annually formed in seas and lakes, and that every year
some new igneous rocks are produced in the bowels of the earth,
but we cannot watch the progress of their formation; and as they
are only present to our minds by the aid of reflection, it requires an
effort both of the reason and the imagination to appreciate duly their
importance.” But that they are actually of extreme importance, that
in fact all the most characteristic features of our earth at present are
due to the steady action of these two causes, no geologist now
doubts.
I propose now to consider one form in which the earth’s
aqueous energies effect the disintegration and destruction of the
land. The sea destroys the land slowly but surely, by beating upon
its shores and by washing away the fragments shaken down from
cliffs and rocks, or the more finely divided matter abstracted from
softer strata. In this work the sea is sometimes assisted by the other
form of aqueous energy—the action of rain. But in the main, the sea
is the destructive agent by which shore-lines are changed. The other
way in which water works the destruction of the land affects the
interior of land regions, or only affects the shore-line by removing
earthy matter from the interior of continents to the mouths of great
rivers, whence perhaps the action of the sea may carry it away to
form shoals and sandbanks. I refer to the direct and indirect effects
of the downfall of rain. All these effects, without a single exception,
tend to level the surface of the earth. The mountain torrent whose
colour betrays the admixture of earthy fragments is carrying those
fragments from a higher to a lower level. The river owes its colour in
like manner to earth which it is carrying down to the sea level. The
flood deposits in valleys matter which has been withdrawn from hill
slopes. Rainfall, acts, however, in other ways, and sometimes still
more effectively. The soaked slopes of great hills give way, and great
landslips occur. In winter the water which has drenched the land
freezes, in freezing expands, and then the earth crumbles and is
ready to be carried away by fresh rains; or when dry, by the action
even of the wind alone. Landslips, too, are brought about frequently
in the way, which are even more remarkable than those which are
caused by the unaided action of heavy rainfalls.
The most energetic action of aqueous destructive forces is seen
when water which has accumulated in the higher regions of some
mountain district breaks its way through barriers which have long
restrained it, and rushes through such channels as it can find or
make for itself into valleys and plains at lower levels. Such
catastrophes are fortunately not often witnessed in this country, nor
when seen do they attain the same magnitude as in more
mountainous countries. It would seem, indeed, as though they could
attain very great proportions only in regions where a large extent of
mountain surface lies above the snow-line. The reason why in such
regions floods are much more destructive than elsewhere will readily
be perceived if we consider the phenomena of one of these terrible
catastrophes.
Take, for instance, the floods which inundated the plains of
Martigny in 1818. Early in that year it was found that the entire
valley of the Bagnes, one of the largest side-valleys of the great
valley of the Rhône, above Geneva, had been converted into a lake
through the damming up of a narrow outlet by avalanches of snow
and ice from a loftier glacier overhanging the bed of the river
Dranse. The temporary lake thus formed was no less than half a
league in length, and more than 200 yards wide, its greatest depth
exceeding 200 feet. The inhabitants perceived the terrible effects
which must follow when the barrier burst, which it could not fail to
do in the spring. They, therefore, cut a gallery 700 feet long through
the ice, while as yet the water was at a moderate height. When the
waters began to flow through this channel, their action widened and
deepened it considerably. At length nearly half the contents of the
lake were poured off. Unfortunately, as the heat of the weather
increased, the middle of the barrier slowly melted away, until it
became too weak to withstand the pressure of the vast mass of
water. Suddenly it gave way; and so completely that all the water in
the lake rushed out in half an hour. The effects of this tremendous
outrush of the imprisoned water were fearful. “In the course of their
descent,” says one account of the catastrophe, “the waters
encountered several narrow gorges, and at each of these they rose
to a great height, and then burst with new violence into the next
basin, sweeping along forests, houses, bridges, and cultivated land.”
It is said by those who witnessed the passage of the flood at various
parts of its course, that it resembled rather a moving mass of rock
and mud than a stream of water. “Enormous masses of granite were
torn out of the sides of the valleys, and whirled for hundreds of
yards along the course of the flood.” M. Escher the engineer tells us
that a fragment thus whirled along was afterwards found to have a
circumference of no less than sixty yards. “At first the water rushed
on at a rate of more than a mile in three minutes, and the whole
distance (forty-five miles) which separates the Valley of Bagnes from
the Lake of Geneva was traversed in little more than six hours. The
bodies of persons who had been drowned in Martigny were found
floating on the further side of the Lake of Geneva, near Vevey.
Thousands of trees were torn up by the roots, and the ruins of
buildings which had been overthrown by the flood were carried
down beyond Martigny. In fact, the flood at this point was so high,
that some of the houses in Martigny were filled with mud up to the
second story.”
It is to be noted respecting this remarkable flood, that its effects
were greatly reduced in consequence of the efforts made by the
inhabitants of the lower valleys to make an outlet for the imprisoned
waters. It was calculated by M. Escher that the flood carried down
300,000 cubic feet of water every second, an outflow five times as
great as that of the Rhine below Basle. But for the drawing off of the
temporary lake, the flood, as Lyell remarks, would have approached
in volume some of the largest rivers in Europe. “For several months
after the débâcle of 1818,” says Lyell, “the Dranse, having no settled
channel, shifted its position continually from one side to the other of
the valley, carrying away newly erected bridges, undermining
houses, and continuing to be charged with as large a quantity of
earthy matter as the fluid could hold in suspension. I visited this
valley four months after the flood, and was witness to the sweeping
away of a bridge and the undermining of part of a house. The
greater part of the ice-barrier was then standing, presenting vertical
cliffs 150 feet high, like ravines in the lava-currents of Etna, or
Auvergne, where they are intersected by rivers.” It is worthy of
special notice that inundations of similar or even greater
destructiveness have occurred in the same region at former periods.
 It is not, however, necessary for the destructive action of floods
in mountain districts that ice and snow should assist, as in the
Martigny flood. In October, 1868, the cantons of Tessin, Grisons, Uri,
Valois, and St. Gall, suffered terribly from the direct effects of heavy
rainfall. The St. Gothard, Splugen, and St. Bernhardin routes were
rendered impassable. In the former pass twenty-seven lives were
lost, besides many horses and waggons of merchandise. On the
three routes more than eighty persons in all perished. In the small
village of Loderio alone, no less than fifty deaths occurred. The
damage in Tessin was estimated at £40,000. In Uri and Valois large
bridges were destroyed and carried away. Everything attested the
levelling power of rain; a power which, when the rain is falling
steadily on regions whence it as steadily flows away, we are apt to
overlook.
It is not, however, necessary to go beyond our own country for
evidence of the destructive action of water. We have had during the
past few years very striking evidence in this respect, which need
scarcely be referred to more particularly here, because it will be in
the recollection of all our readers. Looking over the annals of the last
half-century only, we find several cases in which the power of
running water in carrying away heavy masses of matter has been
strikingly shown. Consider, for instance, the effects of the flood in
Aberdeenshire and the neighbouring counties, early in August, 1829.
In the course of two days a great flood extended itself over “that
part of the north-east of Scotland which would be cut off by two
lines drawn from the head of Loch Rannoch, one towards Inverness
and the other to Stonehaven.” The total length of various rivers in
this region which were flooded amounted to between 500 and 600
miles. Their courses were marked everywhere by destroyed bridges,
roads, buildings, and crops. Sir T. D. Lauder records “the destruction
of thirty-eight bridges, and the entire obliteration of a great number
of farms and hamlets. On the Nairn, a fragment of sandstone
fourteen feet long by three feet wide and one foot thick, was carried
about 200 yards down the river. Some new ravines were formed on
the sides of mountains where no streams had previously flowed, and
ancient river channels, which had never been filled from time
immemorial, gave passage to a copious flood.” But perhaps the most
remarkable effect of these inundations was the entire destruction of
the bridge over the Dee at Ballater. It consisted of five arches,
spanning a waterway of 260 feet. The bridge was built of granite,
the pier, resting on rolled pieces of granite and gneiss. We read that
the different parts of this bridge were swept away in succession by
the flood, the whole mass of masonry disappearing in the bed of the
river. Mr. Farquharson states that on his own premises the river Don
forced a mass of 400 or 500 tons of stones, many of them of 200 or
300 pounds’ weight, up an inclined plane, rising six feet in eight or
ten yards, and left them in a rectangular heap about three feet deep
on a flat ground, the heap ending abruptly at its lower extremity.” At
first sight this looks like an action the reverse of that levelling action
which we have here attributed to water. But in reality it indicates the
intense energy of this action; which drawing heavy masses down
along with swiftly flowing water, communicates to them so great a
momentum, that on encountering in their course a rising slope, they
are carried up its face and there left by the retreating flood. The
rising of these masses no more indicates an inherent uplifting power
in running water, than the ascent of a gently rising slope by a mass
which has rolled headlong down the steep side of a hill indicates an
upward action exerted by the force of gravity.
Even small rivers, when greatly swollen by rain, exhibit great
energy in removing heavy masses. Thus Lyell mentions that in
August, 1827, the College, a small river which flows down a slight
declivity from the eastern watershed of the Cheviot Hills, carried
down several thousand tons’ weight of gravel and sand to the plain
of the Till. This little river also carried away a bridge then in process
of building, “some of the arch stones of which, weighing from half to
three-quarters of a ton each, were propelled two miles down the
rivulet.” “On the same occasion the current tore away from the
abutment of a mill-dam a large block of greenstone porphyry,
weighing nearly two tons, and transported it to a distance of nearly
a quarter of a mile. Instances are related as occurring repeatedly, in
which from 1000 to 3000 tons of gravel are in like manner removed
by this streamlet to still greater distances in one day.”
It may appear, however, to the reader that we have in such
instances as these the illustration of destructive agencies which are
of their very nature limited within very narrow areas. The torrent, or
even the river, may wear out its bed or widen it, but nevertheless
can hardly be regarded as modifying the aspect of the region
through which it flows. Even in this respect, however, the destructive
action of water is not nearly so limited as it might appear to be.
Taking a few centuries or a few thousand years, no doubt, we can
attribute to the action of rivers, whether in ordinary flow or in flood,
little power of modifying the region which they drain. But taking that
wider survey (in time) of fluviatile work which modern science
requires, dealing with this form of aqueous energy as we deal with
the earth’s vulcanian energies, we perceive that the effects of river
action in the course of long periods of time are not limited to the
course which at any given time a river may pursue. In carrying down
material along its course to the sea, a river is not merely wearing
down its own bed, but is so changing it that in the course of time it
will become unfit to drain the region through which it flows. Its
bottom must of necessity become less inclined. Now although it will
then be lower than at present, and therefore be then even more
than now the place to which the water falling upon the region
traversed by the river will naturally tend, it will no longer carry off
that water with sufficient velocity. Three consequences will follow
from this state of things. In the first place there will be great
destruction in the surrounding region through floods because of
inadequate outflow; in the second place, the overflowing waters will
in the course of time find new channels, or in other words new rivers
will be formed in this region; thirdly, owing to the constant presence
of large quantities of water in the depressed bed of the old river, the
banks on either side will suffer, great landslips occurring and choking
up its now useless channel. Several rivers are undergoing these
changes at the present time, and others, which are manifestly unfit
for the work of draining the region through which they flow (a
circumstance attested by the occurrence of floods in every wet
season), must before long be modified in a similar way.
We are thus led to the consideration of the second form in which
the destructive action of inland waters, or we may truly say, the
destructive action of rain, is manifested,—viz., in landslips. These, of
course, are also caused not unfrequently by vulcanian action, but
equally of course landslips so caused do not belong to our present
subject. Landslips caused directly or indirectly by rain, are often
quite as extensive as those occasioned by vulcanian energy, and
they are a great deal more common. We may cite as a remarkable
instance a landslip of nearly half a mile in breadth, now in progress,
in a district of the city of Bath called Hedgmead, which forms a
portion of the slope of Beacon Hill. It is attributed to the action of a
subterranean stream on a bed of gravel, the continued washing
away of which causes the shifting; but the heavy rains of 1876–77
caused the landslip to become much more marked.
Besides slow landslips, however, rain not unfrequently causes
great masses of earth to be precipitated suddenly, and where such
masses fall into the bed of a river, local deluges of great extent and
of the most destructive character often follow. The following
instances, cited in an abridged form from the pages of Lyell’s
“Principles of Geology,” attest the terrible nature of catastrophes
such as these.
Two dry seasons in the White Mountains of New Hampshire were
followed by heavy rains on August 28, 1826. From the steep and
lofty slopes of the River Saco great masses of rock and stone were
detached, and descending carried along with them “in one
promiscuous and frightful ruin, forests, shrubs, and the earth which
sustained them.” “Although there are numerous indications on the
steep sides of these hills of former slides of the same kind, yet no
tradition had been handed down of any similar catastrophe within
the memory of man, and the growth of the forest on the very spots
now devastated clearly showed that for a long interval nothing
similar had occurred. One of these moving masses was afterwards
found to have slid three miles, with an average breadth of a quarter
of a mile.” At the base of the vast chasms formed by these natural
excavations, a confused mass of ruins was seen, consisting of
transported earth, gravel, rocks, and trees. Forests were prostrated
with as much ease as if they had been mere fields of grain; if they
resisted for a while, “the torrent of mud and rock accumulated
behind till it gathered sufficient force to burst the temporary barrier.”
“The valleys of the Amonoosuck and Saco presented, for many
miles, an uninterrupted scene of desolation, all the bridges being
carried away, as well as those over the tributary streams. In some
places the road was excavated to the depth of from fifteen to twenty
feet; in others it was covered with earth, rocks, and trees to as great
a height. The water flowed for many weeks after the flood, as
densely charged with earth as it could be without being changed
into mud, and marks were seen in various localities of its having
risen on either side of the valley to more than twenty-five feet above
the ordinary level.” But perhaps the most remarkable evidence of the
tremendous nature of this cataclysm is to be found in Lyell’s
statements respecting the condition of the region nineteen years
later. “I found the signs of devastation still very striking,” he says; “I
also particularly remarked that the surface of the bare granite rocks
had been smoothed by the passage over them of so much mud and
stone.” Professor Hubbard mentions in Silliman’s Journal that “in
1838 the deep channels worn by the avalanches of mud and stone,
and the immense heaps of boulders and blocks of granite in the river
channel, still formed a picturesque feature in the scenery.”
It will readily be understood that when destruction such as this
follows from landslips along the borders of insignificant rivers, those
occurring on the banks of the mighty rivers which drain whole
continents are still more terrible. The following account from the pen
of Mr. Bates the naturalist, indicates the nature of the landslips
which occur on the banks of the Amazon. “I was awoke before
sunrise, one morning,” he says, “by an unusual sound resembling
the roar of artillery; the noise came from a considerable distance,
one crash succeeding another. I supposed it to be an earthquake,
for, although the night was breathlessly calm, the broad river was
much agitated, and the vessel rolled heavily. Soon afterwards
another loud explosion took place, followed by others which lasted
for an hour till the day dawned, and we then saw the work of
destruction going forward on the other side of the river, about three
miles off. Large masses of forest, including trees of colossal size,
probably 200 feet in height, were rocking to and fro, and falling
headlong one after another into the water. After each avalanche the
wave which it caused returned on the crumbly bank with
tremendous force, and caused the fall of other masses by
undermining. The line of coast over which the landslip extended was
a mile or two in length; the end of it, however, was hid from our
view by an intervening island. It was a grand sight; each downfall
created a cloud of spray; the concussion in one place causing other
masses to give way a long distance from it, and thus the crashes
continued, swaying to and fro, with little prospect of termination.
When we glided out of sight two hours after sunrise the destruction
was still going on.”
We might consider here the action of glaciers in gradually
grinding down the mountain slopes, the destructive action of
avalanches, and a number of other forms in which snow and ice
break down by slow degrees the upraised portions of the earth. For
in reality all these forms of destructive action take their origin in the
same process whence running waters and heavy rainfalls derive their
power. All these destructive agencies are derived from the vapour of
water in the air. But it seems better to limit the reader’s attention in
this place to the action of water in the liquid form; and therefore we
proceed to consider the other ways in which rain wears down the
land.
Hitherto we have considered effects which are produced chiefly
along the courses of rivers, or in their neighbourhood. But heavy
rainfall acts, and perhaps in the long run as effectively (when we
remember the far wider region affected) over wide tracts of nearly
level ground, as along the banks of torrents and rivers.
 The rain which falls on plains or gently undulating surfaces,
although after a while it dries up, yet to some degree aids in
levelling the land, partly by washing down particles of earth,
however slowly, to lower levels, partly by soaking the earth and
preparing a thin stratum of its upper surface to be converted into
dust, and blown away by the wind. But it is when very heavy storms
occur that the levelling action of rain over widely extending regions
can be most readily recognized. Of this fact observant travellers
cannot fail to have had occasional evidence. Sir Charles Lyell
mentions one instance observed by him, which is specially
interesting. “During a tour in Spain,” he says, “I was surprised to see
a district of gently undulating ground in Catalonia, consisting of red
and grey sandstone, and in some parts of red marl, almost entirely
denuded of herbage, while the roots of the pines, holm oaks, and
some other trees, were half exposed, as if the soil had been washed
away by a flood. Such is the state of the forests, for example,
between Oristo and Vich, and near San Lorenzo. But being
overtaken by a violent thunderstorm, in the month of August, I saw
the whole surface, even the highest levels of some flat-topped hills,
streaming with mud, while on every declivity the devastation of
torrents was terrific. The peculiarities in the physiognomy of the
district were at once explained, and I was taught that, in speculating
on the greater effects which the direct action of rain may once have
produced on the surface of certain parts of England, we need not
revert to periods when the heat of the climate was tropical.” He
might have cited instances of such storms occurring in England. For
example, White, in his delightful “Natural History of Selborne,”
describes thus the effects of a storm which occurred on June 5,
1784: “At about a quarter after two the storm began in the parish of
Harpley, moving slowly from north to south, and from thence it came
over Norton Farm and so to Grange Farm, both in this parish. Had it
been as extensive as it was violent (for it was very short) it must
have ravaged all the neighbourhood. The extent of the storm was
about two miles in length and one in breadth. There fell prodigious
torrents of rain on the farms above mentioned, which occasioned a
flood as violent as it was sudden, doing great damage to the