The White Man’s Burden, Soil Erosion, and the Origins of Green Capitalism

Abstract

This chapter presents evidence that knowledge of both the dangers presented by soil erosion and the means to successfully address it exist deep in the memory and experience of agricultural societies and were understood by the white settlers who colonized North America. Yet, even as knowledge of the problem and efforts to contain it in the United States and around the world grew, so did the erosion crisis. As the erosion crisis developed in colonial societies, addressing its root causes was out of the question for those in charge because doing so “may well require a social and political revolution.” Colonial officials and colonists could not consider the radical social change needed to address the root cause of extreme socio-ecological crises because such change would threaten the racialized colonial social order. This is the denial represented by green capitalist and colonial approaches to ecological problems, which dominated early conservationists' attempts to address soil erosion.