The Last Empty Places and the Shifting American Attitude Toward Nature - Where Do We Go Next in the Age of Climate Change?

When the Puritans landed in the early 1600s, their religion cast the American wilderness as the abode of Satan. That attitude has shifted dramatically over the ensuing centuries, helped along by American natural philosophers like Henry David Thoreau and Aldo Leopold, leading to the creation of National Parks and wilderness areas, and now to the point where we’re even “rewilding” damaged landscapes. The big question is: Where do we go from here? Of course, for the Native tribes on the continent, it never was “wilderness.” It was home. This talk is based on my book The Last Empty Places (Ballantine, 2010; reissued by Mountaineers Books, 2023).