We of
the machine age admire ourselves for our mechanical ingenuity; we harness cars
to the solar energy impounded in carboniferous forests; we fly in mechanical
birds; we make the ether carry our words or even our pictures. But are these
not in one sense mere parlor tricks compared with our utter ineptitude in
keeping land fit to live upon? Our engineering has attained the pearly gates of
a near millennium, but our applied biology still lives in nomad’s tents
of the Stone Age. If our system of land-use happens to be self-perpetuating, we
stay. If it happens to be self-destructive we move, like Abraham, to pastures
new.
