One of the most tired tropes of the history of the civil rights movement is the comparison of the approaches of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X to the scourges of racism and s

The Environmental Movement Author(s): Samuel P. Hays Source: Journal of Forest History, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Oct., 1981), pp. 219-221 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of Forest History Society and American Society for Environmental History Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4004614 Accessed: 22-02-2019 23:33 UTC

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THE ENVIRONMENTAL

MOVEMENT

by Samuel P. Hays

[jj In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a new set Ccof public concerns began to take shape

and came to be called the "environmen- tal movement." This differed markedly from the older "conservation movement," expressing objectives of envi- ronmental quality and ecology rather than efficient material resource development and management, and con- stituting a broad, mass movement far more so than did earlier conservation efforts.

These new concerns arose out of the massive social and economic changes that took place in American society after World War II. Much of this came from the rising stan- dard of living of the American people and the growth of amenities (as distinguished from earlier preoccupation with necessities and conveniences) as an increasing aspect of leisure time and consumption patterns. As with advanced industrial societies generally, Americans began to place less emphasis in their lives on work, and more on home, family, and leisure and on the quality of those nonwork ac- tivities. One aspect of these new values and objectives was to insist on a higher quality of one's surrounding en- vironment-the air, water, and land.

Just at the time that these new values came to be impor- tant to a large segment of Americans, modern technology developed a new capability for environmental disruption. The scale of industrial plants, electrical generating utilities, highways, airports, surface mining, housing developments, and transmission lines grew so rapidly that these often appeared to constitute massive threats and in- trusions into both residential communities and places where Americans enjoyed recreational and leisure-time activities. At the same time, the use of chemicals increased markedly. Chemical waste often got into the air, water, and land and inflicted harm on people, plants, and animals to such an extent that it seemed out of control. Much of the environmental movement arose from attempts by people to protect the environment they knew and prized from such degradation.

These twin objectives-enhancement and protection of the environment-often gave rise to a broader concern for the long-run viability of the physical and biological world upon which sustained human institutions depended. Much environmental degradation seemed to disrupt normally functioning biological processes, to change ecosystems in undesirable ways, to destroy plant and animal species, and to diminish agricultural lands and wildlands through rapid development and suburbanization. At the same time, as the 1970s wore on, there was increasing concern about ex- haustion of the supply of material resQurces, especially energy. Many began to argue that there were "limits to

growth," that the carrying capacity of the earth was finite, and that rapid population growth, personal co i 3umption, and waste in industrial production endangere, I the long- run viability of human society.

Few of these concerns had appeared earlier r. the con- servation movement, which had focused pri i.arily on resource development. In fact, much of the new en- vironmental movement was at odds with the earl e r conser- vation concerns. In forestry, conservation had stressed sustained-yield wood production, while the envi ronmental movement thought of the forest as an enviro i nent for home, work, and play rather than as a source of com- modities. The environmental demand for i i1derness designations and aesthetic management met w th severe opposition from professional foresters interested primarily in wood production. In the development ) f water resources, which had earlier played a major role in conser- vation activities, the construction of dams and chlanneliza- tion and dredging of streams met with vigorous en- vironmental opposition because of preference .or free- flowing streams and wetland natural systems. Beyond this, the interest in air and water quality were quite niew con- cerns that had not been a part of earlier conseriration ac- tivities.

The environmental movement began to take shape in the late 1950s and early 1960s, largely around objectives associated with public land management. Outdocr recrea- tion had grown rapidly after World War II and, by the late 1950s, led to the creation of an Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission, which outlined a variety of possible programs. The Wilderness Act of 1964 created a national system of wilderness areas, and in 1968 ckicts were passed that provided for national systems of hiking trails and wild and scenic rivers. At the same time, the Land and Water Conservation Fund was created in 1964 to provide money for outdoor recreation activities at both the federal and state levels. All these activities continued vigorously into the 1970s. The wilderness movement, for example, continued to expand and to gather even more vigorous sup- port than it had in the early 1960s; its most significant ef- fort in these years was the successful drive to designate wilderness areas in Alaska.

In the 1960s the new concern over pollution began to take shape. One can trace interest in both air and water pollution back into earlier decades, but these were local- ized and limited efforts, and it was not until the late 1950s that communities began to demand that special steps be undertaken to reduce both kinds of degradation. Much of the initial interest concerned aesthetics; smoke made cities unattractive, and raw sewage floating in streams, such as the Potomac River at Washington, D.C., was both unsightly and offensive to human smell. Federal laws passed in the 1960s provided a significant underpinning for a new management program for both air and water; they became a comprehensive federal attack when the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act were passed in 1970 and 1972. In- creasingly these programs came to emphasize the adverse effects of pollution on human health, as well as on fish and other biological life.

New concerns absorbed an increasing amount of atten- tion from the environmental movement in the 1970s. One arose from the adverse impact of harmful chemicals. The

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Increased leisure time led to the growing popularity of outdoor recreation and deeper appreciation of wilderness-all factors in the emergence of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Above, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area of northern Minnesota.

U. S. Forest Service photo, FHS Collection

concern for pesticides had arisen much earlier, in the late 1950s, and had been emphasized especially by Rachel Car- son in her book, Silent Spring (1962). This concern was ex- tended in the 1970s to harmful chemicals to which workers were exposed in the workplace, to chemicals that escaped from industrial plants to contaminate the air and water, and to toxic waste dumps from which chemicals leaked in- to water supplies and the air. The other concern involved the question of energy supplies. Almost every form of energy production and conversion gave rise to some en- vironmental harm, whether the destruction of a wild river by a dam, stream pollution from surface mining, or the dangers of atomic energy. By the time of the first interrup-

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Opposition to use of herbicides and pesticides on forestlands was part of a general concern about the harmful effects of chemicals on the environment and on human health.

U. S. Forest Service photo, FHS Collection

tion of Middle East oil supplies in the winter of 1973-1974, the environmental movement promoted an alternative energy program that would increase supplies and yet be far more environmentally benign. The program empha- sized greater efficiency in energy use-conservation, a moratorium on nuclear power, rapid development of photovoltaic solar energy, and the use of coal, under strict controls and safeguards, as an interim source.

Throughout the 1970s environmental affairs took on an international scope. Environmental problems increasingly appeared to be transnational and global: the pollution of seas, such as the Mediterranean, shared by several na- tions; the "transboundary" flow of air pollution within Europe or between Canada and the United States; the pollution of oceans from oil spills; the depletion of ocean fisheries and destruction of tropical forests; the feared im- balance between population and food supply; and the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These con- cerns were spearheaded by the United Nations Conference on the Environment, held in Stockholm in 1972, and the subsequent establishment of the United Nations Environ- ment Program. American citizen organizations, such as the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, developed special interna- tional programs. Environmental professionals in the United States participated actively in research and writing about these problems, often jointly with their counterparts in other nations. By 1980 two reports gave these issues sharp focus: one, World Conservation Strategy, was prepared by the World Wildlife Fund, and the other, The Global 2000 Report to the President, was drawn up by the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality.

The environmental movement was popular and mass based; it arose far less from the institutional leaders of society and far more from the general public as people in many places and many walks of life sought to enhance and protect their environment. These popular demands gave rise to legislation, but they also stimulated much more public influence through the courts and in administrative decision-making. Several environmental groups hired lawyers and financed litigation on behalf of environmental

220 JOURNAL OF FOREST HISTORY * OCTOBER 1981

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National Wildlife annually publishes the "Environmental Quality Index," a subjective analysis of the state of the nation's natural resources. The judgments on resource trends on this summary chart represent the collective thinking of the magazine's editors and the National Wild- life Federation staff. From National Wildlife, February-March 1981, page 36; copyright 1981 by the National Wildlife Federation

objectives, often seeking to restrict the environmentally harmful effect of federal agency-sponsored development. The courts gave "standing" to individuals to protect their environmental rights, and many laws provided that citizens could sue to enforce them. Administrative agencies found themselves challenged directly by citizens who demanded actions more in tune with environmental objectives. One extremely useful process was the environmental impact statement, provided in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, in which each federal agency had to assess the environmental impact of its actions and propose alter- natives that might be preferable. Much litigation took place under this requirement, the net effect being to modify somewhat the practices of some federal agencies.

The management of public lands was especially influenced by public "involvement." Strong citizen interest in designa- tion of wilderness areas on the national forests gave rise to the public's first major role in the formation of ad- ministrative environmental policy. Plans for wilderness, and later for general forest management, were prepared in draft form and then circulated for public comment. At various stages in the decision-making process, public meetings were held to get "input" from citizens. These became the pattern for environmental impact statements, which the courts required; they were mandated for all forest plans and for the various plans in the administrative districts of the Bureau of Land Mangement. Administrative agencies responded to these persistent citizen demands for policies favorable to their views by developing a host of procedures for involving the public. The Forest Service was perhaps most involved in this process. In the wilderness review procedure known as RARE II, completed in 1979, more than 264,000 letters or "responses" were received by the Forest Service.

The environmental movement did not proceed without considerable opposition. This came especially from those

in both public and private life who were committed to material-development objectives and who viewed en- vironmental objectives as secondary and often un- necessary. While environmentalists looked upon their gains as merely a modest beginning, developmentalists con- sidered them to be "extreme." Public development agen- cies, although privately resistant to environmental demands (a resistance displayed by their constant effort to limit citizen "input" into administrative decision), sought to convey a stance of acceptance. Many private businessmen were more explicitly hostile. While accepting some en- vironmental innovations, they increasingly developed political strategies to thwart and turn back many other en- vironmental demands. As the environmental movement came on stronger in the late 1960s and early 1970s, developmental groups were momentarily stunned and reacted in disbelief. Soon, however, they began to organize in opposition and did so effectively throughout the decade. Often they were able to blunt legislation considerably by influencing administrative choices in implementing laws. And they used the courts even more frequently than did en- vironmentalists in pressing their case. Throughout the 1970s, this opposition succeeded in holding back many en- vironmental objectives, and increasingly so as the decade came to a close.

To most environmental issues there was a highly technical context; many matters of land management, air and water pollution, and the health and ecological effects of chemical pollutants depended on technical questions of fact. Hence scientific investigations played a critical role in environmental debates. This provided the environmental movement with a significant opportunity, of which it took full advantage, to bring into debates much technical infor- mation that institutional leaders in government, corpora- tions, and even scientific organizations tended to overlook. But in this task the environmental movement was also at a disadvantage, for the discovery, acquisition, transfer, and application of information in decision-making was often costly, and business corporations and government enjoyed far greater resources. This inequality in political influence that the environmental movement faced was symptomatic of the way in which the new political inequality in American society turned heavily on inequality in the ac- cess to and use of technical information.

While the developmentalists had become a formidable force by the late 1970s, the environmental movement also continued strong. Public opinion studies indicated that con- cern for air and water pollution remained high, that a ma- jority of Americans felt that forests should not be cut fur- ther, that deserts should be protected from development and motorized intrusion, that wildlife habitat should be re- tained, and that wetlands should be carefully protected. The actions of institutional leaders in government and the professions as well as in private business did not always reflect these attitudes, giving rise to the conviction by en- vironmentalists that only through continued public pressure could their gains of the 1960s and 1970s be main- tained and furthered. This popular element, so absent in the earlier conservation movement, was the vehicle by which changing public values in the advanced industrial society of the United States were translated into public policy. E

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