32 - Environmentalism

Summary

Environmentalism is a moving target, always changing position and appearance. Some see it as a state of mind or a way of life; others assume it is a critique of contemporary society or a political platform. Even its single most widely understood meaning, concern about the state of, and human impacts on, the natural environment, has diverse implications, from merely recycling cans and bottles to rejecting industrial society. Environmental values vary across cultures: One society’s bustling, prosperous city is another’s smogchoked hell; a stagnant swamp fit for draining is also a diverse wetland worth preserving. Where consensus has formed on environmental problems, their definition as matters of personal or societal responsibility nevertheless varies across social contexts.

Clearly, a linear, sequential history of environmentalism is not possible. As a result, studies of environmentalism have often focused on specific places: the American West, New England, Canada, Britain, Sweden, or India. Conversely, historians attempting a general account have sometimes been tempted to constrain this diversity within a single narrative, grounded in a search for the “roots” or “origins” of environmentalism.

In seeking these roots, historians have most often found them in individuals such as Gilbert White, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and George Perkins Marsh or, more recently, Rachel Carson or Aldo Leopold. Recent studies have provided a wider view of these origins by demonstrating how ideas have emerged from colonial contexts to eventually shape European perspectives or by showing the significance of places and disciplines not usually considered central to environmentalism, such as industrial hygiene and the “workplace roots of environmentalism.”