The United States government bought the Louisiana Purchase from France in 1803, acquiring all or parts of what are now 15 states as well as land that extended into what are now the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. This solved some problems for the US but created others, including a debate about whether the action was allowed under the US Constitution. What to do with all of this land became a long-term issue for the young country. Issues about the expansion of slavery were prominent in discussions.
The idea of making relatively small plots of land available to settlers at low or zero cost ('homesteading') was favored by many. But, opposition came from southerners who feared that this would work against plantation-style slave-holding agriculture, and from factory owners in the northeast who believed that cheap or free western lands would raise labor costs by giving more favorable opportunities to many low-cost workers. The secession of the southern states at the start of the US Civil War reduced opposition notably, and the Homestead Act of 1862 was passed soon thereafter. The Morrill Act allowed the creation of land-grant universities, which have provided so much valuable advice to homesteaders and others, and the act establishing the US National Academy of Sciences, which also has contributed greatly to the well-being of so many of these settlers, also passed about this time.
The Homestead Act offered 160 acres free to anyone who met certain requirements of living on and improving the land. Land was often distributed in a "land rush", in which a particular region was opened for settlement beginning at a certain time. 'Sooners' or 'moonlighters' (those who got in 'sooner' by the light of the moon) included some people, such as certain employees of the railroads or the government, who were legally allowed to go in sooner, but others who did so illegally. Complex and long-lasting court cases arose about land claimed by illegal Sooners. (Oklahoma is often called the 'Sooner State', a term that was viewed negatively a century ago because of the implication of cheating, but now is generally viewed positively.)
The homesteaders and their barbed-wire fences often came into conflict with ranchers or cowboys who used large tracts of land for cattle. In drier regions, 160 acres was really too small to make a productive and profitable farm, so in some sense, the government actions may have contributed to the great difficulties that arose when major droughts hit, as during the 'Dust Bowl' of the 1930s. Still, the settlement led to well-established, productive states where millions of people now live happily.
This history can be viewed, or 'spun', in many ways. An opponent of government actions might point to the unfairness of government and railroad employees having access to lands before others, and might point out that government meddling in the free market helped cause the economic and human tragedy of the Dust Bowl. A proponent of government actions might counter that 15 states and millions of people owe their existence to proactive government policies. The story is very different if viewed from the perspective of native Americans, cowboys, plantation owners, factory owners, homesteaders in relatively rainy places or near water sources, homesteaders in relatively dry places far from water sources, and many other groups.
A few points relevant to this chapter are very clear, however. The main events were not controlled by the public, nor by private interests, but by diverse public and private groups and individuals interacting in various ways. The many different interacting groups were impacted by the main policy decisions in distinct ways, with greater or lesser benefit or harm. And, each policy decision built on a long history of earlier decisions that themselves had winners and losers; thus, changing paths is a policy choice with winners and losers, but keeping the same rules is also a policy choice with winners and losers. Because society tends to adapt to existing policies, a change always has short-term costs of switching these adaptations, no matter how beneficial the long-term outcome and this plus the political effort needed to make a change tend to favor continuation of existing policies. But, the choice to continue existing policies is still a policy choice with winners and losers.
A few of the many resources on this topic include:
Serious European settlement of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, USA began with the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620. The land was almost totally tree-covered, but logging for fuel and building material, and to clear fields for cultivation, quickly became widespread. Wood was burned in great amounts, boiling sea water to obtain salt for packing cod for shipping and to 'try' whale meat to extract the valuable oil. The consequences of deforestation, including soil drying and erosion, as well as the scarcity of fuel, became so severe that government actions were quickly taken.
In Eastham, the freedom-loving pioneers banned cutting of wood on the common lands in 1690 except to supply wood for sales out of town. In 1694, this prohibition was extended beyond the common lands to any source of wood. In 1695, cutting wood on the common was prohibited even for outside cash sales. Similarly, in 1711-12, Truro on the Cape was requiring Court-granted permission before people could cut wood for certain uses. (Rubertone, P. E., 1985, 'Ecological Transformations,' in Part II: Changes in the Coastal Wilderness: Historical Land Use Patterns on Outer Cape Cod, 17th - 19th Centuries, in McManamon, F.P. (ed.), Chapters in the Archaeology of Cape Cod, III: The Historic Period and Historic Period Archaeology, Cultural Resources Management Study Number 13 (Division of Cultural Resources, North Atlantic Regional Office, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC), p. 78.)
Interestingly, the scarcity was overcome, in part by the reliance of 'renewable' resources. With windmills to pump seawater into solar drying troughs, the Cape Codders secured large quantities of inexpensive salt, without cutting trees.
Dr. Alley summarized many estimates of the costs of dealing with climate change in his book Earth: The Operators' Manual. Some of those are repeated here.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2007 found costs of between slight growth (0.6%) and somewhat larger magnitude shrinkage (3.0%) of global GDP in 2030, versus business-as-usual, for different paths toward stabilizing the atmospheric concentration of CO2 at between 1.6 and 2.5 times the level before the industrial revolution.
IPCC, 2007, Summary for Policymakers, in Metz, B., O. R. Davidson, P. R. Bosch, R. Dave and L. A. Meyer (eds.), Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Cambridge University Press, New York).
Much relevant work has been done in Germany. The German Advisory Council on Global Change also considered various rates and levels of stabilization, finding costs centered on about 0.7% of the world economy.
German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU [8]) (Grassl, H., J. Kokott, M. Kulessa, J. Luther, F. Nuscheler, R. Sauerborn, H.-J. Schellnhuber, R. Schubert and E.-D. Schulze), 2003, Climate Protection Strategies for the 21st Century: Kyoto and Beyond.
Comparable estimates - average about 1% cost, as low as 1% benefit and as high as 4% costs - were summarized in Hasselmann, K., 2009, 'What to do? Does science have a role?' European Physical Journal Special Topics 176: 37 - 51.)
Links
[1] http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1998019326/PP/
[2] http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html
[3] http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/
[4] http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act/
[5] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth104/sites/www.e-education.psu.edu.earth104/files/Unit3/Mod12/homesteading-family.gif
[6] https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SO010
[7] http://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=SO010
[8] https://www.wbgu.de/en/