The Congressman Who Warned Us About Climate Change in 1864

[Judi Lynn]

George Perkins Marsh wrote a best-selling book warning about the devastation of man-made climate change in the 19th century. We've been backsliding ever since.

ANDREW BELONSKY
04.20.18 11:02 PM ET

George Perkins Marsh minced no words: “Man everywhere is a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discord.”

So began Man and Nature, the Vermont congressman and U.S. ambassador’s in-depth summation of man-made climate change, a book that laid out in simple terms how man changed the world for the worse and how that change was going to bury us in dust. A bestseller, it was hailed as a sea-change when it first hit shelves in 1864.

Yeah, you read that right: 1864, 154 years ago. Why hasn’t America listened?

Marsh’s love for nature is traced to Woodstock, Vermont, where this son of a prominent lawyer grew up in the early 1800s, when the land was still frontier wild and where Marsh communed with the ancient oaks, maple, and ash endemic to the region.

More:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-congressman-who-warned-us-about-climate-change-in-1864.html