World View of Destruction and Conservation of Natural Resources

A problem of growing concern is the destruction of natural resources and the reaction of that destruction on man himself. Too commonly treated as a phase of the economic nationalism of recent years,' the problem is more properly viewed as world-wide in scope and pre-historic in origin. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have, however, witnessed the tendency of this problem to develop beyond the point where it could easily be solved by migration,2 so that it now requires more complicated measures. We must agree with Woeikof, who asserted in 1901 that the civilization which had developed during the nineteenth century was disharmonious with nature to a supreme degree. More recently Mill summed up the situation as follows: If the influence of the land on the life of Man has been reduced in the last hundred years from a tyranny to a doubtful hint, the reaction of Man on the economy of the world has grown from a jest to a serious menace. The disturbance of the balancing harmony of plant and animal distribution and the exhaustion of mineral deposits has no precedent in the life of species other than Homno sapiens, and unless he vindicates his name by bringing reason to the rescue of his future, there is no doubt that Nature will ultimately take