The debate over the environmental crisis is not new; anxiety about industry’s impact on the environment has existed for over a century. What is new is the extreme polarization of views. Mounting evidence of humanity’s capacity to damage the environment irreversibly coupled with suspicions that government, industry, and even science might be than it was a hundred years ago to respond appropriately to impact analyses that demand action.
Unlike today’s adversaries, earlier ecological reformers shared with advocates of industrial growth a confidence in timely corrective action. George P. Marsh’s pioneering conservation tract Man and Nature (1864) elicited wide acclaim without embittered denials. Man and Nature castigated Earth’s despoilers for heedless greed, declaring that humanity “has brought the face of the or to dismiss his ecological warnings as hysterical. To the contrary, they generally agreed with him.
Why? Marsh and his followers took environmental improvement and economic progress as givens; they disputed not the desirability of conquering nature but the bungling way in which the conquest was carried out. Blame was not personalized; Marsh denounced general greed rather than particular entrepreneurs, and the media did not hound malefactors. Further, were in keeping with the Enlightenment premise that humanity’s mission was to subdue and transform nature.
Not until the 1960s did a gloomier perspective gain popular ground. Frederic Clements’ equilibrium model of ecology, developed in the 1930s seemed consistent with mounting environmental disasters. In this view, nature was most fruitful when least altered. Left undisturbed, flora and fauna gradually attained maximum diversity and stability. Despoliation beneficent climax; technology did not improve nature but destroyed it.
The equilibrium model became an ecological mystique: environmental interference was now taboo, wilderness adored. Nature as unfinished fabric perfected by human ingenuity gave way to the image of nature debased and endangered by technology. In contrast to the Enlightenment vision of nature, according to which rational managers construct an ever more improved reduction of human interference in order to restore environmental stability.
What this question is testing
Your task
Capture the passage's overall primary point — the claim everything else supports.
Common trap
Answers that are true but too narrow (a single paragraph) or too broad (beyond the passage's scope).
Winning move
Summarize the whole passage in one sentence first, then match it to a choice.
Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.