Canaries, that irreparably damaged their ecosystems.^44 “Considering the
beauty of the land,” Christopher Columbus wrote on first seeing Haiti, “there
must be gain to be got.” Columbus and the Spanish transformed the island
biologically by introducing diseases, plants, and livestock. The pigs, hunting
dogs, cows, and horses propagated quickly, causing tremendous environmental
damage. By 1550 the “thousands upon thousands of pigs” in the Americas had
all descended from the eight pigs that Columbus brought over in 1493.
“Although these islands had been, since God made the earth, prosperous and
full of people lacking nothing they needed,” a Spanish settler wrote in 1518,
after the Europeans’ arrival “they were laid waste, inhabited only by wild
animals and birds.”^45 Later, sugarcane monoculture replaced gardening in the
name of quick profit, thereby impoverishing the soil. More recently, population
pressure has caused Haitians and Dominicans to farm the island’s steep
hillsides, resulting in erosion of the topsoil. Today this island ecosystem that
formerly supported a large population in relative equilibrium is in far worse
condition than when Columbus first saw it. This sad story may be a prophecy
for the future, now that modern technology has the power to make of the entire
earth a Haiti.
Not one textbook brings up the whale oil lesson, the Haiti lesson, or any
other inference from the past that might bear on the question of progress and the
environment. In sum, although this issue may be the most important of our time,
no hint of its seriousness seeps into our history textbooks. To my surprise,
today’s textbooks have actually gotten worse than their predecessors about the
environment. Except for two passages in Pageant and one in Journey, they say
nothing about environmental issues since the Carter presidency. The 1970
invention of Earth Day, 1973 Arab oil embargo, and 1979 Iran hostage crisis
are the environmental events that get into our textbooks, along with the
establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Nixon
administration. Fifteen more years have passed since these events took place.
Since authors take no note of underlying trends but only of flashy events, they
see no history to report in the interval. Putting the energy crisis that much
further back in time, however, implies that it’s old news. Moreover, the
textbooks imply that it has pretty much been fixed. “With the help of the
[National Energy] act,” The Americans assures us in a typical passage, “U.S.
dependence on foreign oil had eased slightly by 1979.” If so, 1979 was
unusual, because in 1975, before Carter became president, the United States