George Perkins Marsh (March 15, 1801 – July 23, 1882), an American diplomat and philologist, is considered by some to be America's first environmentalist and by recognizing the irreversible impact of man's actions on the earth, a precursor to the sustainability concept,[1] although "conservationist" would be more accurate.

George Marsh graduated from Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, in 1816 and from Dartmouth College with highest honors in 1820 and taught at Norwich University the following year.

He accomplished this task with a vigor that surprised the diplomats of Athens and showed a masterly knowledge of the Greek constitution and legislation, as well as of international law.

He was a remarkable philologist for his day, and a scholar of great breadth, knowing much of military science, engraving and physics, as well as Icelandic, which was his specialty.

[8] In 1847 Marsh gave a speech[9] to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont, adhering to the idea that man's activities influence local and regional climate by cutting and clearing forests, and draining swamps.

This was a common debate among philosophers, naturalists, and local elites on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean during the Enlightenment era, including David Hume, Comte de Buffon, Thomas Jefferson, Hugh Williamson, Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Lyell, and many others in the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries:[10] "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 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 winds.

Referring to the clearing of once-lush lands surrounding the Mediterranean, he asserted "the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon."

[12] He prepared an American edition of Hensleigh Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology (New York, 1862), to which he made large additions and annotations.

[13] His collection included more than a thousand prints by various artists, dating from the 15th to the 19th centuries, representing works by Rembrandt, Albrecht Dürer, William Hogarth and others.

[14] In 1849, the Smithsonian Institution purchased a large group of Marsh's European prints and art books, which was transferred on deposit to the Library of Congress in 1865.