A European Political Report		A New Issue Appears Twice Monthly		July 26, 2010
No More Stories to Tell: Humans in Human-induced Tragedies	Russia Poised to Leapfrog Ukraine, Moldova in EU Visa Drive	Previous Anson Reports are now available as free downloads in PDF format	A list of recently published and forthcoming books on Europe and Transatlantic relations	All Alone in Palm Beach, Florida	The Staff of Europasurvey.org

EuropaSurvey has been listed on www.world-newspapers.com as an established pan-European news service and newsletter since 2004. In 2005 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty accorded EuropaSurvey the right to reprint articles pertinent to Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova. Unless otherwise indicated, the bi-monthly commentary, the Anson Report, as well as all book reviews, are written by the editor Dr. Ann H.L. Sontz. A majority of the Anson Reports can be freely downloaded in standard PDF format. EuropaSurvey content, including its original commentaries and their titles, are the property of its staff and are subject to international copyright and disclaimer. Permission to reprint an Anson Report or Book Review can be obtained by writing europasurvey_mail@lycos.com.

July 30, 2010

No More Stores To Tell: Humans In Human-Induced Tragedies

"What Would Teddy Roosevelt Do?" The question streamed out of the Internet, --appropriately perhaps given the devastation to US coastal communities brought about by a three-month long oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico and the popular president’s activist role in conserving hundreds of millions of American acreage from both exploitation, and for posterity’s sake. (1)

He had the "right stuff," according to present day Americans -- imagination, creativity, and a demonstrated ability to take risks. (2) A book on US naval history, a Cuban military campaign, trust-busting, and museum projects, accompanied a multi-faceted, energetic political presence. It was the president’s role as a conservationist, however, that continues to attract those involved in efforts to contain the negative impact of human-induced tragedies the likes of which his less developed technological age could barely imagine. Others might seek an associated contribution, namely a coherent focus on the environment itself as a special arena of concern, whose preservation or deterioration lies primarily in the choices that humans, as guardians of nature, ultimately make.

An accustomed component today in ecology and related sciences, Roosevelt’s special attention to environmental conservation was no modest achievement given the fact that that the enlarging American landscape had been subject to a different variety of interpretations on the part of those at home and abroad. Few of these actually converged with the president’s later, more crystallized approach.

By the 1870’s, American readers had absorbed a diverse array of comments about their new existence – from the prominent philosopher Alexis de Toqueville’s early and lively interest in equality, to the author Charles Dickens’ original, scathing emphasis on the discrepancy between political ideals and the realities of entrenched and expanding slavery.

Other commentators contributed a range of observations. The majority of these were generated by an overwhelming desire to see just what had happened to European institutions after they had been transplanted to the New World of democratic politics. To many, the wilderness and the country’s vast territorial reach presented the traveler with overwhelming obstacles. Cities, in contrast, invited a customary if somewhat disorganized but dynamic terrain. Those in search of institutional modification sometimes found a modest "good society" nonetheless. Others confronted less of a spirit of urbanity than a certain degree of recklessness and a speech pattern seemingly too boisterous for European standards.

Still others, bent on exploring developing communities, managed to organize small expeditions that allowed a safe return to urban areas to which they brought collected tales of the rise and decline of border settlements, and especially of the human abilities that surrounded the frontier’s particular capacity to survive. An energized America, noted one traveler, seemed a veritable grave of old Europe. Yet there was little doubt that it was destined to rise again in a new, even sustainable way. Expeditions that followed the path of the original enthusiastically reported that change was a constant part of life, and that a major growth from rural settlement to municipality could occur within just five years time. (3)

George Bancroft, politician and historian of early American history, sought a blend of landscape with an evolving democracy. By the mid-nineteenth century, Francis Parkman, with whom TR had enjoyed an enthusiastic and admiring correspondence, had appeared on the historical scene and with a slightly altered perspective. (4) There was a quest to understand a convergence of nature and human nature through field trips along western and eastern pioneer trails and settlements, explorations of wars between Native Americans and French military in search of territory, and survival traits contributed by indigenous peoples to new settlers, traders, and missionaries. ((5) Even a cursory review of the intellectual legacy on which later conservationists could draw, modify, or reject, might include the work of a pioneering anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan whose studies of the Iroquois yielded a complex picture of the link between features of their social organization and the use of hunting and farming territory and, at the same time, a justification for considering human societies as a separate and distinct field of inquiry. (6)

Somehow, somewhere, perhaps within the context of differentiating, specialized academic departments and studies, forests, seas, coastlines, and interrelated human endeavors and enterprises became separated in view over time. Unfortunately, ironically, the tragedy that now affects natural and human lifeways has begun to bring closure to this separation. It has taken a long time to recognize the spirit to which Clarence King, an American geologist, brought to his mountaineering research on the Sierra Nevada in the late nineteenth century. He found the desolate area full of heights, sky, and ice. His aim was to bring a feeling of relief to an otherwise barren region, and to share with it a renewed sense of purpose and of life. (7)