I am interested in this research question because I prefer to spend my time outside instead of in front of a screen. I enjoy going camping, hiking and white water rafting when I get the chance. I was born and raised on a farm in rural South Carolina and I spent way more time outside than inside. I'm not really a tree huger but I do appreciate and enjoy nature and I think we have the responsibility to be good stewards of the land we inhabit. I also understand that human progress requires the use of resources, but in a responsible and sustainable way. 

This is something that makes me wonder what values I have and which are more important. I believe that it is our moral obligation to care for the land and the animals that live on it. Both of these are basically at the mercy of the human race and what we decide to do with them. If we were to decide to cut down a forest and hunt an animal to extinction there is not much they could do. At the same time I believe that we have the responsibility to advance the human race and use what we have to our advantage. 

My personal experience relates back to where I was raised. We only took what we needed from the land and were never destructive for no reason. If we cut down a tree it was for fire wood and if we cleared land it was to plant something else there. 

The main things that qualifies me to write about this is because I have to live on this planet and the health of this planet directly affects me. I also am usually the beneficiary of resources being taken from the land because I am a consumer of goods. Finding a good balance between development and environmental protection may not affect me so much in my life time, but I do hope to have children and I don't want to leave a mess for them.

The central claim of White is that for much of American history people only considered the West to be nature. They did not think of the forest near their house or the stream down the road. They also thought that since Nature was so far away that they could have no effect on it with their actions. They also did not understand the effects of fossil fuels on the environment which they began to use in the industrial revolution. His major evidence is the books like Nature's Metropolis, by William Cronon, and Rivers of Empire, by Donald Worster that held these views. 

The major values at stake are that people can do what they want and I won't affect the planet. What we do here has an impact on the other side of the world and it is possible to completely exhaust the resources of the planet. This can threaten the interests of governments or businesses that wish to expand and consume resources. 

They author, Richard White, lists over thirty complete citations of where he got his data, so he should be credible. The source is from the Thomas Cooper Library so I believe that gives it credibility as well. This source does not seem biased because he lists the problems with the attitude many had toward the environment, but he also knows that they did not have the same science or access to information that we do now. 


The central claim of Tucker is that even if we take care of resources here in the U.S. that we could still be doing damage. His claim is that America is so globalized that we have an impact on environments around the world. We have goods made for us in factories around the world and those factories have local impacts. He also brings up the amount of fuel consumed in shipping all of those goods back to the U.S. His evidence is that we get food, rubber, oil and many other petroleum products from Central and South America. He also brings up how many of our factories are in underdeveloped countries in Asia and how we use up the resources from there rain forests. 

The values at stake seems to be Americas consumer culture and how fast and often we use up resources. He also questions how when things are out of sight for us they go unnoticed. We do not want to see our land and resources desolated, but when it happens someplace else we don't really care. The interests at stake are those of consumers in America who want cheap goods and producers who want big profits. 

Tucker has almost fifty complete citations on this topic. He also gives a very comprehensive breakdown on how our factories ended up where they are and how the wars we have won have led us to have so much influence in some areas. He does seem a little biased against the U.S. and its consumer culture. He does not think it is good for Americans to use so much of the world's resources. 


There is no real claim because this author presents both sides of an argument without taking a side. One side the Anthropocentrists believe that humans are the most important and that we should use resources for our benefit but in a sustainable way. The other side rejects the notion that humans are the most important and wants society to abandon capitalism and the market economy. He also presents the idea that many traditional beliefs and ideas may need to be examined.

The major values at stake are Anthropocentrism, the idea that the human race is the most significant and sacred, and the ideas of capitalism and consumerism. Nelson does not take a side but does say that some feel this way. If we do this though it does put the advancement of human society at stake and could make life harder for people.

Nelson seems unbiased because he does not take a side. He simply presents the different ideas and leaves is to the reader to make up their mind. He is credible because he has over twenty citations and this article is printed in an encyclopedia. 

Feasibility of Research Question

The question is arguable because people have varying ideas pertaining to the importance of the environment. Some view it simply as available resources to make goods and others view nature as sacred. Some people want to manage the Environment but still produce goods and others think we should leave it alone completely. One big agreement among the article is that for so much of human history we were ignorant of the processes of nature that we had an effect on and that only recently has anybody thought about doing anything about it. The disagreement comes in when people try to come up with what is more important, nature or humans. They all agree that something should be done they just do not agree on what because it is a morally gray area. I think that there are extremes on both sides and my views are somewhere in the middle. I want to be a good steward of my home but I also enjoy the goods that it can produce and how convenient modern goods and medicine is. I might revise my research question to ask what the current problems are and what is already being done. 
