The Earth Overshoot Day for 2017 is August 2. This means that humanity’s consumption rate has already passed the Earth’s production rate of resources. The date is getting closer and closer every year. The Ballinger-Pinchot controversy was an important event to mark to beginning of conservation in the United States. It began when Colliers magazine accuses Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger of shady dealings in Alaskan coal lands. It is, in essence, a conflict rooted in contrasting ideas about how to best use and conserve western natural resources.
Ballinger was an appointee of President William Taft, the man who had succeeded the committed conservationist President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt had developed most of his environmentally