Geography 2412 Lecture Notes 11/25 and 12/2

Chapter 9: Rise of Environmentalism

Environmentalism can be thought of as an ideology, a movement, and even as a way of life. We will examine its recent evolution into a modern social movement, with emphasis on the U.S. scene.

Modern environmentalism, say that which swept the US starting in the late 1960s and highlighted by the first earth day in 1970, was driven by several factors.

First, events mattered: Love Canal, pollution (DDT that among other things, appeared to have caused the last wild condors to disappear); nuclear accidents and releases (TMI. Chernobyl), extinctions, sterile lakes (acid rain), ozone holes, etc.

Second, associated social movements, namely the anti-war movement of the 1970s and the civil rights movement from the 1960s on, can be seen as energizing an environmental movement.

Third, the actions of individuals helped propel the movement: the protest at Love Canal (Lois Gibbs), and the residents’ demand for action, solution, and redress, is cited in the text.

Fourth, there emerged an ideology: that something is wrong, and something must be done to assure that we have a clean environment in which to live; the belief that a different environment/society relationship should and could be established;

These are some of the elements of a social movement as discussed by Harper. He describes how Social Change can emerge from individual actions, which accumulate into evolving social attitudes, structures, new attitudes/perceptions, and new policies (e.g., the protests a Love canal made other groups feel they could get their pollution problems solved, too).

A Movement, then is grassroots mobilization over specific problems that accumulates into collective action an identified “movement” with ideology, goals, structure (groups, etc.), and methods (law suits, protests, civic disobedience) generally recognized by, say, the media, politiciamns, and the general public, all of which then have to decide their position vis-à-vis the movement.

Forms of American Environmentalism (list on p. 349; read subsequent sections for these selected elements (or “environmental discourses”) from that list:

•Preservationism: Nature is to be protected as unchanged as possible; wilderness movement. Some utilitarian notions here—that wild nature is important to the spiritual growth of humans.

Note that ideological roots of enviornmnetlaism in US were set by George Perkins Marsh who first identified the negative human impact on nature; by John Muir who codified preservationism: that humans should preserve nature; and Aldo Leopold, who linked nature and human ethics.

•Conservation: something of a pure utilitarian, scientific approach to resource management---yes, resources should be conserved, but only to ensure the maximum use for humans. This is associated with the first head of the US Forest service, Gifford Pinchot.

•“Reform Environmentalism (“Modern”): ecology-oriented movement; needed to protect human health and well-being, so still utilitarian, but more broadly aimed at protecting the environment. Really go going in 1060s with “calls to arms” like Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring on the pollution of the environment by toxic chemicals, and the Cassandra (neo-Malthusian) arguments about human population and dwindling resources by Garret Hardin, and Paul Erhlich. And by events, smog in NYC; Cuyahoga River in Ohio catching fire; oil spill off Santa Barbara, CA. Led to modern environmental movement, with formal organizations like Sierra Club, Audubon, Wilderness Society (etc., p. 355) leading charge for reform, especially thru legislation:

Wildernsss Act, 1964: partly bio-centric and utilitarian (calls for solitude and recreation useful to humans)

National Environmental Policy Act 1970

Endangered Species Act, 1973 (described earlier in class), which comes closets to “bio-centric” thinking;

And clean air and water acts

•Environmental Justice: integrates social and ecological reform---assuming that not only do human notions of justice apply (e.g., everyone deserves a clean environment), but that ecological problems flow from the inequitable structure of human society. Sometimes seen as antidote to fact that moderfn environmental movement was mostly white and middle-class.

•Deep Ecology: bio-centric or eco-centric ideology: nature has intrinsic value, don’t save it just to serve human needs, but because it deserves to be protected from exploitation in its own right. Questions arise: can humans actually ever fully accord nature its own “rights”?.

•Bio-regionalism: Reform env/soc relationships in places, regions, where we reform human occupance to sustainable use of a bio-region (e.g., So Rockies) specific set of resources and natural endowments.

•Eco-Feminism: integrates ecological and feminist ideology: attempts to reverse domination of female by male, and of nature by humans. Lays blame for this domination and degradation on patriarchal structure, male attitudes.

•Eco-spiritualism; eco-theology: response to arguments about Christian roots of the problem; and faith-based reform of the “dominate” admonition from Genesis into “stewardship”. In the news during class as a ecumenical group started an antiglobal warming campaign with the anti-SUV slogan: ”What would Jesus drive?”

Counter Movement (anti-envionmnetalism)

Not only does environmentalism seek to change some people’s lifestyle, it seeks to enforce change through legilsaiton. Naturally, not everyone agrees, especially those interests who stand to loose money, power, or access to resources and commons due to environmentalism. The basic ideaolgoical counter-weight to environmentalism in the US, is, according to Harper, the on-going (though little-mentioned) theme of Manifest destiny: that America is destined to be as a great industrial, military, and political power, and that a key ingredient to this is exploitation of its natural resources and development of its “wild” or natural areas. Land settlement and use by private interests was at the root of manifest destiny..

•Property rights: the modern backlash to environmentalism is based especially in the argument that many (if not most) environmental restrictions and regulations violate constitutional rights and freedoms, especially the personal pursuit of happiness (often thought of as wealth), private rights, and privat property. Private property is a big ideological force that counters the tendency of reform environmentalism to extend regulations to individual property owner decisions (e.g., you can’t do anything you want on your land is, for example, your actins harm an endangered species).

•Extractive and business interests (“Wise Use” movement): it only makes sense that economic interests would try to counter a movement whose goals would in many cases cause them a loss of profit. Harpere describes their efforts on pp. 371-74. He also suggests that there is an asymmetry between their response and the original challenge of environmentlaism---a broad movement can sometimes trump narrow interests, and too much complaining by industry, for example, can back-fire with a population that generally, if weakly, embraces a broad environmentalism. He mentions the negative response to President Ronald Reagan’s anti-enviornmental rhetoric and actions. We are now witnessing the same struggle with the Bush administration and the congress, which have stated their goal of rolling back “over-reaching” environmental protections.

•How durable/strong a movement (pp.374-381)?

Generally, pro-environmental attitudes have deepedned even when political leaders discount or fight them, so this seems a pretty enduring movement. There is, of course, a big difference between attitude and behavior, so the movement is still ideologically strong but weaker in terms of behavioral reform (Americans are actually becoming less energy efficient, for example).

•Dominant social paradigm vs New Ecological paradigm(pp. 376-77): the message here is that American appear to hold a mixture of ecological and technological views, but that, at least in terms of attitudes, they espouse an increasingly ecological view.