[ draft version comments appreciated] Catherine Kavassalis Return to Contents Return to BioMuncie
last revision: 05/09/2003
By analogy, social groups tend to maintain stable 'communities of thought and practice'. Working through a succession of ideas, societies grow trees of knowledge, plant value systems and establish culture. Gradual changes or cataclysmic events cause these relatively stable systems to evolve, transform, or collapse and a new community of thought and practice develops. Science according to Thomas Kuhn (1962) is "a series of peaceful interludes punctuated by intellectually violent revolutions," which he described as "the tradition-shattering complements to the tradition-bound activity of normal science." After such revolutions, "one conceptual world view is replaced by another," (p. 6). Although Kuhn neglected the kinds of gradual accumulation of knowledge (Franklin, 2000) and more subtle changes in intellectual climate that are also involved in the evolution of ideas, his observations should not be dismissed. The replacement of Ptolemy's earth-centered universe with Copernicus' heliocentrism came only after a series of events made the earth-centered paradigm unsustainable. Galileo's discoveries disrupted standard paradigms and forced the displacement of one 'species of thought' and new growth was able to develop until another climax community formed.
This metaphoric thinking provides a way of describing the growth of environmentalism in the United States. The environmental movement has in many ways been a disruptive movement. Environmentalists introduce new species of thought into existing 'climax' communities. Certain conditions are necessary within a given community for environmentalism to take root. Whether new species of thought are able to spread, and for instance ecocentric thinking replaces anthropocentric thinking in a stable community of thought, is a question that can only be answered in time. The following is a brief account of the growth of environmentalism in the United States.
Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children. (Ancient Native American Proverb, qtd in National Institute for Environmental Health, 2002, n.p.)
The relationship between man and nature has been the source of discussion from the earliest of times. Different cultures have different understandings of this relationship. These often-conflicting understandings are apparent in America and can be traced historically. Early settlers came to the Americas to find freedom and opportunity in the American wilderness. The wilderness was something both to be feared for its dangers and revered for its beauty and potential wealth. Taming the wilderness was a heroic task that helped to define the American identity. Yet there was a desire to leave at least some of the land wild to protect the beauty and spirit that also defined America. Two distinct movements arose during the 18th and 19th century: preservationism, the desire to preserve untouched lands, and conservationism, the desire to manage natural resources judiciously. The former can be illustrated in the writing of Thomas Jefferson, John Muir and Henry David Thoreau; the latter emerged in the work of George Marsh, Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot.I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe. (Thomas Jefferson, 1787, ¶ 2)
Like many early Americans, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1827) viewed the earth as a God-given resource or "a common stock for man to labour and live on." However, untouched lands symbolized a kind of purity that captivated and inspired him, and Jefferson wanted to protect and preserve these untouched domains.
... in Wildness is the preservation of the World. (Thoreau, 1962, p.187)
For Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), and Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Nature - wilderness, represented spiritual freedom. Thoreau thought, "Each town should have a park, or rather a primitive forest, of 500 or a thousand acres, where a stick should never be cut for fuel, a common possession forever, for instruction and recreation,” (1862/1999, “Dedication”). Through Nature, both Emerson and Thoreau suggested that people could connect with God and find spiritual salvation. J. Callicott notes that Emerson and Thoreau ushered in a new perception of wilderness, "nature in America went from demonized to divinized and the American population of European descent went from God's errand runners into the hideous and howling wilderness to sinful and depraved despoilers of God's beautiful creation," (2001, part 2,¶ 10)
John Muir (1838-1914) a California farmer, naturalist, and writer was strongly influenced by the ideas put forward by Emerson (Gifford, 1995) He stated, “Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike,” (Muir, 1912, chapt. 16, ¶ 11). Muir believed that lands should be preserved not just for their potential economic value but also for their beauty, educational and spiritual value. He actively sought to have lands set aside by the government. In the 1890s, he helped to found one of the first environmental organizations in the United States, the Sierra Club, (the first national environmental organization was the Boone and Crockett Club formed by Theodore Roosevelt in 1887). This organization and his writings were influential in promoting the preservationist movement.
Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run away, and if they could, they would still be destroyed -- chased and hunted down as long as fun or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, branch horns, or magnificent bole backbones. . . . Through all the wonderful eventful centuries since Christ's time -- and long before that -- God has cared for these trees, saved them from drought, disease and a thousand storms . . . but he cannot save them from sawmills and fools -- only a concerned public can do that. (Muir, 1897, p. 157)
But not all were receptive to preservation of wild lands. After all, conquering the wild frontiers and bringing civilization to a barbaric world had been seen as a moral obligation to many early Americans. Despite calls from the likes of Thoreau to preserve the wilderness, many continued to feel that cultivating Nature was a noble task, which made the earth more beautiful.America offers the first example of the struggle between civilized man and barbarous uncultivated nature. In North America ...the full energies of advanced European civilization, ... were brought to bear at once on a desert continent, and it has been but the work a day to win empires from the wilderness, and to establish relations of government and commerce between points as distant as the rising and the setting sun. (Marsh, 1847, p.1)
George Perkins Marsh (1802-1882) saw the wilderness as a dessert, in that it could not support human life. Cultivation was civilized; wilderness was savage. However, Marsh also recognized that cultivation of the land must be done judiciously. This Senator from Vermont had a profound understanding of the impact of cultivation on the environment. Greatly concerned about the deforestation that was occurring in his state and the impact it was having on climate, water and soil, Marsh argued for government regulation.In many European countries, the economy of the forest is regulated by law; but here, where public opinion determines, or rather in practice constitutes law, we can only appeal to an enlightened self-interest to introduce the reforms, check the abuses, and preserve us from an increase of the evils I have mentioned. (Marsh, 1847, p.18)
Marsh and like-minded politicians were instrumental in establishing the Department of the Interior and early legislation for forestry management. This 'conservationist' movement was propelled forward by President Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). Echoing the sentiments of the Ancient Native American Proverb, Roosevelt remarked:Defenders of the short-sighted men who in their greed and selfishness will, if permitted, rob our country of half its charm by their reckless extermination of all useful and beautiful wild things sometimes seek to champion them by saying that 'the game belongs to the people.' So it does; and not merely to the people now alive, but to the unborn people. The 'greatest good for the greatest number' applies to the number within the womb of time, compared to which those now alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method. (Roosevelt, 1916, chapt. X, ¶ 5)
Roosevelt worked closely with Gifford Pinchot (1865-1946), who was head of the Forestry Bureau when he first took office. Roosevelt gives Pinchot the credit for shaping the conservation movement. Together they recognized that there are two types of natural resources - renewable ones like forests and soil, and nonrenewable resources like oil and coal. They formulated a Conservation Plan that propounded: “-the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time, the development and use of the earth and all its resources for the enduring good of men-both on a national and international scale,” (Pinchot, 1947, p. 382).
During his years in office, from 1901 to 1909, Roosevelt placed 234 million acres of forest under federal protection, and created 53 wildlife sanctuaries. (Environmental Literacy Council, 2002) It can be argued that Roosevelt was both a preservationist as well as a conservationist. He sought to conserve natural resources for economic and recreational reasons and to preserve wildlife and wild habitats for their incalculable value and beauty.Birds should be saved because of utilitarian reasons; and, moreover, they should be saved because of reasons unconnected with any return in dollars and cents. A grove of giant redwoods or sequoias should be kept just as we keep a great and beautiful cathedral. The extermination of the passenger pigeon meant that mankind was just so much poorer; exactly as in the case of the destruction of the cathedral at Rheims. (Roosevelt, 1916, chapt X.¶ 43)
The conservation and preservation movements were and continue to be intertwined. Yet a battle that pit conservationist Gifford Pinchot against preservationist John Muir makes clear the fundamental distinction between these two environmental perspectives. At the turn of the 19th century, the city of San Francisco petitioned the Federal Government for rights to the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park. They wanted to dam the Tuolumne River and flood the valley to provide water and electricity for the city. John Muir and the Sierra Club campaigned to prevent the creation of a dam.
We held a Sierra Club meeting last Saturday--passed resolutions and fanned each other to a fierce white Hetch Hetchy heat. I particularly urged that we must get everybody to write to Senators and the president keeping letters flying all next month thick as storm snow flakes, loaded with park pictures, short circulars, etc. Stir up all other park and playground clubs, women's clubs, etc. (Muir, 1901, cited in Sierra Club Hetch Hetchy Task Force, 2002,¶ 4)
Muir could not understand why anyone
… would try to destroy such a place... The proponents of the dam scheme bring forward a lot of bad arguments to prove that the only righteous thing for Hetch-Hetchy is its destruction. These arguments are curiously like those of the devil devised for the destruction of the first garden. (1908, ¶ 14)
Gifford Pinchot responded:The delight of the few men and women who would yearly go into the Hetch Hetchy Valley should not outweigh the conservation policy, to take every part of the land and its resources and put it to that use in which it will best serve the most people. (1908, cited in Grey Towers,¶ 6)
In the end, the valley was flooded and the flowing waters separated conservationists from preservationist.
Early environmentalists were generally anthropocentric. Both conservationists and preservationists argued for protection of nature based on the value it had to humans. This value was economic, spiritual, aesthetic, recreational, etc. In the early 1900s, a shift in the perception of the relationship between humans and nature occurred. Ecological science had advanced and by the 1930s the concept of ecosystems had developed. With this new knowledge, field scientists like Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) helped to reframe the conception of Nature.
Leopold was a forester who worked for the U.S. Forest Service. Originally he applied Pinchot's utilitarian conservation philosophy to game and land management, but over time he began to view conservation in a new way.
Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. By land is meant all of the things on, over, or in the earth. Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left. (Leopold, 1922/1953, p. 145)
Leopold felt that people were members of a biotic community that included soil, water and animals alike. As members of this community, they had a moral responsibility to treat each member respectfully. He outlined this land ethic in his book, A Sand County Almanac:
All ethics so far evolved rest upon a single premise that the individual is a member of a community of interdependent parts. His instincts prompt him to compete for his place in the community, but his ethics prompt him also to co-operate (perhaps in order that there may be a place to compete for). ...The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. ... In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such. (1949/1978, pp. 239-40)
Just as Copernicus determined that the earth was not the centre of the universe, Leopold determined that man was not the centre of the biosphere. Of course ecocentrism was not born with Leopold Aldo. Ecocentric religions and worldviews can be traced to the earliest of times. Many of America's native peoples had ecocentric religions and whisps of ecocentrism could be seen in the works of Thoreau and Muir. However the seeds of this idea did not flourish in America until the mid 20th century.
Numerous destabilizing events occurred during the 20th century: world wars, environmental catastrophes, and economic crisis. All of these events contributed to a general disillusionment with science, technology and consumerism and this allowed postmodern worldviews to develop. Deep ecology, eco-anarchism, ecofeminism, eco-socialism are some of the movements that evolved.
In 1979, James Lovelock introduced the idea that Earth,
as a whole, was a living organism in his book entitled Gaia. An atmospheric chemist,
Lovelock described the biosphere as a self-regulating entity in which
all organisms were evolving together as part of a complex system of living and
nonliving matter. Lovelock’s ideas have resonated with many deep ecologists,
who argue, along with system theorists, that the whole is often irreducible to sum
of its parts (Bertalanffy, 1968; Lazlo, 1972). They fear that the destruction
of any part of the biosphere would have severe repercussions.
At the present rate of clearance, it will not be long before the forests no longer have the critical mass they need to exist as self-sustaining ecosystems. When they vanish, the billion poor of those regions will be left with little to support them and in a harsher climate. This is a threat comparable in scale to a global nuclear war. (Lovelock, 1988, p.266)
Environmentalists like George Sessions and Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess felt the need to develop an ethical system or ecosophy to protect the living world, Lovelock's Gaia. Naess and Sessions developed the following principles that serve to define deep ecology:
The Ayn Rand Institute is one of several organizations actively campaigning against 'environmentalism' and federally supported environmental education. They feel that environmentalism is in direct conflict with capitalism, which is understood as the moral right to prosper (2001).
Contrary to much popular belief, environmentalism is not a benevolent movement seeking to improve man's life by cleaning up the air and water. As a doctrine - an "ism" - it is fundamentally an attack on the ideals of Western civilization. Opposed to science, technology, and economic development, environmentalism holds that the non-human has value but the human does not. Environmentalism has become the gravest threat to human survival. Under the guise of advocating clear air and nice treatment to pets, environmentalism aims to retard and then dismantle our industrial/technological society. Environmentalism regards all human productivity and progress as an intrusion on the sanctity of nature and on the "rights" of animals. (Ayn Rand Institute, 2001, “Environmentalism: The Anti-Industrial Revolution” ¶ 1)
Their position is a backlash against the more radical elements of the environmental movement, particularly eco-socialism, which had also emerged in the early seventies. With the publication of The Closing Circle in 1971, Barry Commoner became the chief spokesman for the environmental socialism movement. "For Commoner, environmental problems of all sorts, including overpopulation, are effects of social causes inherent in capitalism and colonialism,”(Freenberg, 1996, p. 261). This position has polarized the environmental movement and has unfortunately repulsed a portion of the American public who now actively campaign against all environmentalism.
As we enter the 21st century, concern for the environment has increased, as have ways to look at the environment and environmental problems. Returning to the analogy proffered in the preamble, I would suggest that the various environmental movements have been like new species moving into disrupted climax communities - communities of thought disrupted by knowledge of environmental disasters. Some of these 'species of environmental thought' support one another while others compete for the same resources. Is environmentalism dead? The seeds of the movement have been planted and are being propagated with varying degrees of success, as evidenced by changing attitudes and practices within the United States. An evolution of thought is occurring. Whether this change is ultimately beneficial to life on earth is for future historians to determine.
Both conservation and preservation have been in principle generally supported since the turn of the last century, and today Americans consistently express their desire to protect the environment in polls (Public Agenda, 2002). However, Americans find it difficult to choose between conflicting impulses and views. In his autobiography Pinchot reflected on the acceptance of Conservationism:
Conservation was universally accepted until it began to be applied. From the principle of Conservation there has never been, because there could not be, any serious open dissent. Even when applied in practice to the other fellow, it was unattackable. But when it began to interfere with the profits of powerful men and great special interests, the reign of peace came to a sudden end. (1947, cited in Williams, 1999, sect. 9: ¶ 2)
Pinchot recognized that competing value systems interfered with the acceptance of conservation. Value systems continue to be in conflict and this conflict may never resolve. However as the process of succession continues and a mature system develops, new species of thought will be incorporated into the culture.
As climax communities form and culture a diversity of viable species some conflicts will resolve, but most will remain as part of a dynamic balance. As new species of environmental thought are incorporated into local cultures, they will be propagated through institutions. Education will cultivate these ideas and help to stabilize communities.The problem, then, is how to bring about a striving for harmony with land among a people many of whom have forgotten there is any such thing as land, among whom education and culture have become almost synonymous with landlessness. (Leopold, 1949, p.210)