WIKIPEDIA Our Plundered Planet is a book published in 1948 that was written by Fairfield Osborn

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Jr. , son of the American geologist Henry Fairfield Osborn and cousin of Frederick Osborn, was a conservationist. He was long time president of the New York Zoological Society.-Biography:...

 about environmental destruction by humankind. The book is a critique of humankind's poor stewardship

Stewardship

Stewardship is an ethic that embodies responsible planning and management of resources. The concept of stewardship has been applied in diverse realms, including with respect to environment, economics, health, property, information, and religion, and is linked to the concept of sustainability...

 of Earth. It typifies the earliest apocalyptic environmental literature, in which human beings are seen as destroyers of the natural world. This book, along with William Vogt

William Vogt

William Vogt was an ecologist and ornithologist, with a strong interest in population control. He was the author of best-seller Road to Survival , National Director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and secretary of the Conservation Foundation.William Vogt was born in Mineola, New York...

’s Road to Survival, also published in 1948, launched a Malthusian revival in the post War era, and would inspire Paul R. Ehrlich

Paul R. Ehrlich

Paul Ralph Ehrlich is an American biologist and educator who is the Bing Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and president of Stanford's Center for Conservation Biology. By training he is an entomologist specializing in Lepidoptera , but...

, author of The Population Bomb

The Population Bomb

The Population Bomb was a best-selling book written by Paul R. Ehrlich and his wife, Anne Ehrlich , in 1968. It warned of the mass starvation of humans in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation, as well as other major societal upheavals, and advocated immediate action to limit population growth...

among many others.

Influences

In writing this book, Osborn was influenced by Guy I. Burch and Elmer Pendell’s overpopulation tract Population Roads to Peace or War (1945) and Paul Sears’ analysis of dust bowls in Deserts on the March (1935). He had also been influenced by various "New Deal

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...

" initiatives in the public planning of land use and restoration, such as the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority

Tennessee Valley Authority

The Tennessee Valley Authority is a federally owned corporation in the United States created by congressional charter in May 1933 to provide navigation, flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, and economic development in the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly affected...

, the Civilian Conservation Corps

Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D...

 and various policies to address the “dust bowl

Dust Bowl

The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands from 1930 to 1936...

s” of the time. Osborn, as well as his famous father, Henry Fairfield Osborn

Henry Fairfield Osborn

Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sr. ForMemRS was an American geologist, paleontologist, and eugenicist.-Early life and career:...

, was also heavily influenced by the eugenics

Eugenics

Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...

movement prior to the war.

Editions

• UK edition: Faber and Faber, London, 1948
• UK edition: R. MacLehose and Company Limited, The University Press Glasgow, 1949