'The Greatest Good of the Greatest Number in the Long Run': TR, Pinchot, and the Origins of Sustainability in America

摘要

In the mid-1890s, Gifford Pinchot, brash and patrician, brought his Yale degree, experiences abroad, and new ideas about forestlands to Washington and made his mark early. In 1896, the National Academy of Sciences launched a seven-member National Forest Commission. Pinchot, just thirty-one years old, was the youngest on the panel and the only one not an Academy member. Yet his influence was second to none in the Commission's Recommendation to President Grover Cleveland, urging him to make major additions to the fledgling national forest system. Cleveland went along with the idea, which would protect forestlands and assure healthy watersheds for western towns and irrigators, and on Washington's Birthday 1897, Cleveland declared 2.5 million acres of public land as forest reserves, thereby doubling the system. By 1898, despite his youth, Pinchot was named Chief of the Division of Forestry, located in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.