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Donald Worster

Donald Worster Biography

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“We trust ourselves, far more than our ancestors did… The root of our predicament lies in the simple fact that, though we remain a flawed and unstable species, plagued now as in the past by a thousand weaknesses, we have insisted on both unlimited freedom and unlimited power. It would now seem clear that, if we want to stop the devastation of the earth, the growing threats to our food, water, air, and fellow creatures, we must find some way to limit both.”

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Book:Under western skies: nature and history in the American West
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“The marketplace is an institution that teaches self-advancement, private acquisition, and the domination of nature. Its way of thinking is incompatible with the round river. Ecological harmony is a nonmarket value that takes a collective will to achieve.”

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Book:The Wealth of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination
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“Human domination over nature is quite simply an illusion, a passing dream by a naive species. It is an illusion that has cost us much, ensnared us in our own designs, given us a few boasts to make about our courage and genius, but all the same it is an illusion.”

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Book:Under western skies: nature and history in the American West
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“We may be entering a new phase of history, a time when we begin to rediscover . . . the traditional teaching that power must entail restraint and responsibility, the ancient awareness that we are interdependent with all of nature and that our sense of community must take in the whole of creation.”

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Book:The Ends of the Earth: Perspectives on Modern Environmental History
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“Environmental historians . . . insist that we have got to go . . . down to the earth itself as an agent and presence in history. Here we will discover even more fundamental forces at work over time. And to appreciate those forces we must now and then get out of parliamentary chambers, out of birthing rooms and factories, get out of doors altogether, and ramble into fields, woods, and the open air. It is time we bought a good set of walking shoes, and we cannot avoid getting some mud on them.”

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Author:Donald Worster
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“Environmental history was . . . born out of a moral purpose, with strong political commitments behind it, but also became, as it matured, a scholarly enterprise that had neither any simple, nor any single, moral or political agenda to promote. Its principal goal became one of deepening our understanding of how humans have been affected by their natural environment through time and, conversely, how they have affected that environment and with what results.”

HumansHas BeensPoliticalPurposeStrongUnderstandingGoalBornNaturalSimpleResultsBehindsMoralEnvironmentCommitmentEnvironmentalEnterpriseAgendasAffectedPrincipalNatural EnvironmentRough TimesMaturedScholarlyPolitical AgendasEnvironmental History
Author:Donald Worster
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