Academic

WELL, THAT?S A RELIEF: ?The grandaddy of all gushers?? Not this spill. Scholars of environmental?

By Glenn Reynolds

WELL, THAT’S A RELIEF: ‘The grandaddy of all gushers’? Not this spill.

Scholars of environmental history, while expressing sympathy for the people of the gulf, say the assertion is debatable. They offer an intimidating list of disasters to consider: floods caused by human negligence, the destruction of forests across the entire continent and the near-extermination of the American bison.

?The White House is ignoring all the shades and complexities here to make a dramatic point,? said Donald E. Worster, an environmental historian at the University of Kansas and a visiting scholar at Yale.

The professors also note the impossibility of ranking such a varied list of catastrophes. Perhaps the worst disaster, they say, is always the one people are living through now.

Still, for sheer disruption to human lives, several of them could think of no environmental problem in American history quite equaling the calamity known as the Dust Bowl.

Well, the decade is young, yet. . . .

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on June 20, 2010 (boomark / email).