How Lucky Per foreshadowed modern thinking - the first ecology novel?

One of the emerging themes in Henrik Pontoppidan's Lucky Per (1904) is ecology and preservation - making this novel in some ways far ahead of its time. (In other ways, the work is almost a throwback, not at all a work of groundbreaking modernism - the style is traditional, 19th-century realism.) The main plot line follow the life course of the eponymous Per as he struggles to break free from his strict religious upbringing and to achieve fame and recognition in the world through his plan for a massive project to build a network of canals in Denmark that will make the country a leader in the 20th-century world economy. His plans, though attracting some followers or believers (particularly in the Jewish intellectual community of Copenhagen) has been largely scorned and ridiculed, which Per rightly sees as a prejudice against one of his class and social standing. At about the mid-point of the novel, however, Per has a kind of epiphany; he's traveling in Germany visiting some massive engineering projects to learn more about his field, and he is overcome by the beauty of nature -leading him to question the merit of his entire project. Is it worth tearing apart the countryside to build a system of transportation? This was an issue I think hardly touched - in literature and in life - up to this time, and HP's skepticism about the cost of progress foreshadows much of the thinking from the mid 20th century and into our age: the cost of progress, as measured in ruined communities, damage to natural beauty, irremediable destruction.