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… is from page 45 of Will and Ariel Durant’s 1965 book The Age of Voltaire [2]:
Word peddlers tend to idealize the countryside if they are exempt from its harassments, boredom, insects, and toil.
The sort of affection that modern humans – those of us accustomed to commerce’s cornucopia – have for nature is chiefly an artifact of trade, industry, and other economic arrangements that so many environmentalists, such as Bill McKibben, unthinkingly disdain.