This Day in History: 1847-09-30

US Congressman George Perkins Marsh helps start the American conservation movement on this day in 1847 with a speech to the Agricultural Society of Rutland, Vt.  He said: But though 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.   In 1864, Marsh will publish Man and Nature: or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action.