Reports coming in from around the world left no doubt. 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history. The Earth’s average temperature rose from the preindustrial average by 1.48 degrees Celsius (2.66 degrees Fahrenheit), perilously close to the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark drawn in the sands by scientists as the threshold not to cross. Scientists were at a loss to explain how the jump in temperature could be so much larger than their models predicted. With much talk about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, they did not see, like the Emperor with no clothes, that the land had been stripped of vegetation and degraded.
George Perkins Marsh saw more clearly. Speaking to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont, in 1847, he described the situation: “Man cannot at his pleasure command the rain and the sunshine, the wind and frost and snow, yet it is certain that climate itself has in many instances been gradually changed and ameliorated or deteriorated by human action. The draining of swamps and the clearing of forests perceptibly affect the evaporation from the earth and, of course, the mean quantity of moisture suspended in the air. The same causes modify the electrical condition of the atmosphere and the power of the surface to reflect, absorb, and radiate the rays of the sun, and consequently influence the distribution of light and heat and the force and direction of the…
