Human Action
Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action, first published in 1864, was written by American polymath scholar and diplomat George Perkins Marsh. Marsh intended it to show that "whereas [others] think the earth made man, man in fact made the earth". As a result, he warned that man could destroy himself and the Earth if we don't restore and sustain global resources and raise awareness about our actions. It is one of the first works to document the effects of human action on the environment and it helped to launch the modern conservation movement.