This book is intended for a variety of audiences. The largest is composed of those who maintain an active interest in environmental affairs. They number in the millions. But usually they are preoccupied with a limited environmental task and find it difficult to grasp the wider range of environmental matters that are extensive, diffuse, and beyond immediate experience. For this group of readers I hope the book will provide some insight into the wider social, economic, and political ramifications of environmental affairs, and give meaning to smaller and more limited actions. With no little presumption, I assume that the integrative predispositions of a historian can be of some value in thinking about the meaning of piecemeal ideas and action.

I hope this sense of perspective will be of special value to those engaged in political confrontation over environmental issues. Most such participants, both advocates of environmental objectives and those who oppose them, become preoccupied with the crises of the moment, which usually precludes time and energy for reflection. For those who can enjoy the luxury of observing rather than only participating, the meaning of the events in such close encounters often is quite different. While antagonists have been engaging in highly charged combat, they also have been creating a new society, a new economy, and a new polity, which a historian, at greater distance, might be able to observe and understand more clearly. If such larger meaning could influence, even slightly, the quality of contemporary debate, this book will have served its purpose.