“[I]t isn’t often noted that American environmentalism splits early into two contrasting schools — and I can see no way to reconcile them. In the 18th century, there was a dramatic shift away from viewing the world through the prism of faith and spirit and God toward understanding it through empirical data gathered and sifted and rationally analyzed. This movement, the Enlightenment, made it possible for humanity to understand the world far better — and to log and build on and conquer it, for a time. Environmentalists are still divided between those who blame the Enlightenment for our environmental crisis and those who think it offers us the only map to safety. This is a showdown between romantics and rationalists. … American environmentalism was midwifed into the world by a romantic, Henry David Thoreau.” (01/12/09)