unnatural landscapes

This is an old stone quarry in England, near Devon, and all that you see is the result of human intervention over the ages. It is a devastation that has become the sublime and is an essential part of English history and folklore. A Celt or a Roman might have seen forests from this vantage point, and their absence now speaks to the decisions, some bad, most inadvertent, that transformed it in such an astonishing fashion.

I find it beautiful, and I'm not sure what the future holds for this place. As I write this, there is unrest in London, which I would like to believe is a consequence of the government's disengagement with its younger citizens. Would it make a difference if some of them lived here? What would they do?

Update: The quarry is in Devon, and near Princetown. Classic moor country. Also, my claims about the predominance of forested land over history are completely unsubstantiated. The only valid claim is that there is a high probability that various human activities regularly deforested the British Isles multiple times over a period of three thousand years.