The United States - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 17

the introduction of large quantities of volcanic particles into the Earth's
upper atmosphere could cause a reduction in surface temperature,
because the particles would lessen the amount of solar energy reaching
the Earth's surface.
Thomas Jefferson was an avid scientific experimenter. Monticello, his
home near Charlottesville, Virginia, featured a museum displaying many
minerals, fossils, bones, and antlers. He wrote to refute a theory proposed
by the French scientist Georges-Louis de Buffon who argued that the New
World's life-forms—plant, animal, and human—were smaller and inferior
to those of the Old, because the New World itself was inferior. America was,
according to Buffon, “a land best suited for insects, reptiles, and feeble men.”
Jefferson rebutted this point by point with charts of the sizes and weights
of American animals. His chief evidence was the buffalo As president,
Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the west as far at the Pacific Ocean.
They traveled up the Missouri River, across the Great Plains and the Rocky
Mountains to the Columbia River in Oregon Country, as it was known.
19th-Century Expansion: By 1850, pioneers were going all the way to
Oregon. Like the East and Midwest, it had fertile land with enough rain
for farming. That was not the situation on the Great Plains, however, for
this region lacked the rainfall. West of the 100th meridian, the land was
too dry to farm. The southwest of New Mexico, Arizona, and southern
California was even drier. Settlers who tried might be lucky for a few years
when precipitation was above normal, but sooner or later, arid conditions
would return.
Besides conquering the West, 19th-century Americans were eagerly
building factories. In New England, textile mills sprang up along the riv-
ers and streams that supplied water power. In Pennsylvania, abundant
coal mines supplied power. The iron and steel industry grew. Mill towns
and mining towns were filthy with smoke and dirty water. Coal and ore
were dug with no regard to the damage to the land. When a coal mine was
depleted and closed, water filled the shafts, absorbed acid, and eventu-
ally seeped out to poison streams and rivers. Life in these towns and in
the cities was hard, with many deaths due to pollution. Sanitation was
poor. Cholera spread from contaminated wells, and smallpox and typhus
spread from garbage. The more progressive cities laid wooden pipes for
drinking water, and later built sewers, which emptied into the nearest
river. They began to collect garbage. As the century progressed, medical
knowledge increased. Lemuel Shattuck's 1850 Report of the Massachusetts
Sanitary Commission laid out the appalling statistics on the high death