From the earliest decades of colonization to the 20th century, Americans have celebrated and largely taken for granted the seemingly endless bounty of their land. Not until the early twentieth century did a significant conservation movement develop before the prodding of professional resource managers like the forester Gifford Pinchot, and politicians like Theodore Roosevelt. The movement was a response to an evident dwindling of know mineral resources, the decimation of virgin forests, and a decline in the fish and game available to sportsmen. It was also an integral expression of the political movement known as progressivism, which stressed, among other things, the use of government power, guided by scientific knowledge and democratic principles, to solve national, social, and economic problems. The progressive conservationists pushed into existence a substantial body of legislation at state and national levels that aimed at the rational management of resources. For the most part, however, these laws had more form than substance, and in practice the exploitation of nature continued and largely unchecked.
By the 1920’s progressivism had faded away, but its enthusiasm for scientific management and research remained active in the business community. Both the commitment to resource management research by industry and the allocation of funds to seek out untapped resources grew rapidly. Science and technology linked up more closely than before to devise means for their exploitation.
The amalgam of science, technology, and business interests not only fostered the continued growth of older industries, but also spawned new industries that fostered economic expansion at great environmental cost. The development of electric power raised manufacturing productivity and the material standard of living, but also polluted the air through the combustion of fossil fuels in huge amounts. The spread of automotive transportation entailed mobility and productivity, but exacted the price of long-term environmental costs, voracious energy consumption, and expropriation of land for railways. The multifaceted petrochemical industry listed among its benefits better agricultural productivity from the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but contributed heavily to air, water, and soil pollution. The aviation industry promoted mobility and cohesion within the nation and helped to end American isolation from the rest of the world, but promoted a new dimension of air and noise pollution, energy demands, and pressure on scarce land in urban areas for airports.
American urbanization and industrialization continued to accelerate between World War I and the 1970’s, with only a temporary slump in the depression era. Demand for iron, steel, coal, oil, gas, water, and food rocked ahead during these years, stimulated particularly by the economic growth associated with World War II. By the 1970’s the industrial might of the United States was an overpowering national and global reality. With six percent of the world’s people, it consumes annually some thirty-five percent of the world’s available resources, while generating proportionate burdens of harmful wastes. While Americans have been proud of their technical and industrial preeminence, it was only in the 1950’s that persuasive environmental thinking began to remind them that being an economic superpower is a mixed blessing with profound ecological consequences.
1.The Americans have always believed that the United States （ ）.
2.Progress in environmental protection in the United States would not have been possible if it had not been for （ ）.
3.The author’s attitude towards environmental laws and regulations in the United States is （ ）.
4.In paragraph 3, the author tries to account for （ ）in the United States.
5.The last sentence of the passage means that （ ）.
