Two new Verne papers
quentin skrabec
John Lamb
Congratulations!
Dear Quentin,
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your two excellently researched articles and offer my heartiest congratulations on getting both published.
Your Verne and Green Cities particularly resonated as Theodore Roosevelt, who of course read all of Verne’s novels including those you cited, echoed Verne when he wrote.
We have become great because of the lavish use of our resources. But the time has come to inquire seriously what will happen when our forests are gone, when the coal, the iron, the oil, and the gas are exhausted, when the soils have still further impoverished and washed into the streams, polluting the rivers, denuding the fields and obstructing navigation.
We are, as a whole, still in that low state, where we do not understand that it is also vandalism wantonly to destroy or to permit the destruction of what is beautiful in nature, whether it be a cliff, a forest, or a species of mammal or bird. Here in the United States we turn our rivers and streams into sewers and dumping-grounds, we pollute the air, we destroy forests, and exterminate fishes, birds and mammals - not to speak of vulgarizing charming landscapes with hideous advertisements. But at last it looks as if our people are awakening.
Congratulations once again.
Best John