This chapter of City at the Water’s Edge really ties into a lot of the issues we were discussing about the Mannahatta paper and goes into detail about how one of the most prominent natural habitats (forests) were destroyed over a few hundred years. I found the example provided by McCully on page 117 regarding how Britain only had one-eighth of their land still “wooded”, so they had to use America as their new source of lumber. This basically represents how countries around the world think today, as we constantly see some countries running out of resources on their own land and resorting to taking those resources from other places. As resources become scarcer, they become more valuable, and only draw in more people to take them away. The advancement of civilization and the progress in technology over these few centuries also play a major role in the destruction of the environment. McCully mentions the importance of shipbuilding for the British and the major impact that had on the devastation on the forests due to massive amounts of wood required to build one ship. However, if Britain didn’t have these strong warships, they might have not been the world power they were at that point in history, so this really presents the problem of whether or not we should sacrifice the environment for our own gain, and if we do, is there a limit to how far we should go? The Industrial Revolution also falls into this category, but without it, would America be where it is today? It is just too tempting to not exploit the environment because there are no immediate short term consequences compared to the short term gains that we can receive.
Another interesting point in the article was the difference of the mindsets between the European colonists and the Native Americans regarding their natural world. McCully mentions on page 120 that both parties viewed the forests as a source of food, fuel, tools, and construction materials, the Europeans would reap the trees for profit and excessive use, while the Native Americans only used the trees whenever it was necessary. Why couldn’t the Europeans adapt this Native American mindset and how different would our natural world be today if this Native American mindset was present in our population today. Unfortunately, the European mindset instead of the Native American mindset is what passed on down to the generations of Americans. Today, people can finally sense that the environment is continuing to degrade at an alarming rate because the effects can actually be seen. This is a problem with how our civilization thinks because we don’t think about consequences that will happen in the future until those consequences start to impact us. If only we noticed 400 years ago how important these natural environments really were and adopted the Native American mindset, the world might be in a lot better condition than it is in today.
