Environmental movement

In the United States, the environmental movement can be divided into a number of distinct periods of development, each of which is noteworthy for the level of activism and the impact the movement has had on natural resource policy.

Background

Although a handful of environmental organizations were founded in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were not influential enough to comprise a social movement. For example, the Sierra Club (founded in 1892), the National Audubon Society (1905), and the National Parks Association (1919, now the National Parks Conservation Association) had specific political agendas, and their memberships were relatively small. The environmental movement did not begin to coalesce until after World War II, with public concern about the management of resources and growing apprehension about pollution.

The Age of Ecology

The 1960s have been called the age of ecology because the decade brought conflict between those who sought to enhance postwar industrial growth and those who sought government regulation over the byproducts of growth—smog in cities such as Los Angeles and London, water pollution in virtually every major urban area, and environmental crises such as an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, which received extensive media coverage in 1969.

Public awareness of the magnitude of environmental degradation was magnified by the work of two authors. Rachel Carson’s exposé on the dangers of pesticides, Silent Spring (1962), and Paul Ehrlich’s warnings about population growth in The Population Bomb (1968) lent credence to the groups that were just beginning to have an impact on the policy-making process.

During the 1960s, the environmental movement began to have an impact on the US Congress, which realized that environmental problems were rapidly becoming a salient political issue. Most of the hallmark pieces of 1960s legislation, such as the Clean Air Act (1963), Clean Water Act (1965), Endangered Species Conservation Act (1966), and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA, 1970), can be traced directly to one or more of the environmental groups pushing for their passage.

The decade also marked a tremendous expansion in the number of environmental groups and political strategies. The Environmental Defense Fund (founded in 1967), for example, used litigation as a powerful tool, while more venerable organizations such as the Sierra Club focused on public education. From 1952 to 1969, the Sierra Club’s membership grew tenfold, while the Wilderness Society’s membership grew from twelve thousand in 1960 to fifty-four thousand in 1970.

At the same time, new organizations such as the African Wildlife Foundation (1961) and the World Wildlife Fund (1961, now the World Wide Fund for Nature) began to broaden their approach to include environmental issues of global concern. While the majority of groups were dedicated to preserving wildlife and their habitats, there also began to be a parallel growth of organizations in Europe that were dealing with pollution in their own regions. These groups became the core of what later became an international environmental movement.

Earth Days and Crises

If one event could be said to have galvanized the environmental movement, it would be the observance of Earth Day on April 22, 1970. An estimated twenty million Americans participated in events ranging from protests and demonstrations to educational seminars to call attention to the declining health of the environment. That year also was the beginning of an exceptional period of development for new groups, including Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest. A year later, the American branch of Greenpeace was founded, along with the environmental watchdog organization Public Citizen.

Although public opinion polls showed that Americans were deeply concerned about the environment during the period immediately before and after Earth Day 1970, that interest was partially replaced over the following fifteen years by the Vietnam War, the 1973 Arab oil embargo, and a declining economy. The environmental movement seemed to lose much of its early momentum as both legislators and the public turned to other issues. Although Congress enacted several significant pieces of legislation, such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA, 1972) and the Toxic Substances Control Act (1976), by 1980 the pace of legislative activity had slowed considerably—and with it the growth of the environmental movement.

From 1970 to 1990, the environmental movement’s ebb and flow seemed tied to crisis or controversy. When an accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, triggered a meltdown, environmental groups opposed to nuclear power gained prominence. Groups associated with fighting toxic waste gained new members in 1978 when the media reported that homes and a school in Love Canal, New York, had been built in an area previously used as a toxic dumping ground by a chemical company. A deadly leak of poisonous gas at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984, led to legislative initiatives in the United States, such as the reauthorization of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, better known as Superfund. Pressure by the environmental movement’s leaders led Congress to investigate whether a Bhopal-type incident could occur at a similar Union Carbide facility in West Virginia.

The Reagan and Clinton Eras

In one sense, the environmental movement’s lowest ebb may have been during the administration of President Ronald Reagan, whose policies of deregulation, budget and personnel cuts, and conservative political appointments scaled back the implementation and enforcement of the prior decades’ environmental laws. However, it also galvanized the movement, creating a common enemy for environmentalists to rally against. Through their lobbying efforts, they forced the president to fire his secretary of the interior, James G. Watt, and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Anne M. Burford.

The most noteworthy trend within the environmental movement in the early 1990s was the globalization of issues and participants. The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro brought together the largest group of environmental organizations ever assembled and reiterated the need to view issues in global, rather than local, terms. It also forced groups to focus their attention on a wide spectrum of emerging environmental issues, such as global climate change and transboundary pollution, and highlighted disputes over whether developed nations should help pay for the cleanup of degraded environments (like those of the former Soviet Union) or for new pollution control technology in developing countries. Environmental issues were given somewhat more priority in the administration of President Bill Clinton.

The Bush Era: Rollbacks, Repudiation, and Redemption

As the twentieth century commenced, so too did the presidency of George W. Bush. For environmentalists, the eight Bush years were characterized by the "three R's": rollbacks, repudiation, and redemption. Environmentalists witnessed rollback of environmental legislation and regulations of the past, repudiation of scientific findings on global warming in particular, and a final act of redemption—the designation of nearly 520,000 square kilometers of the Pacific Ocean and all the marine life within as national monuments a few days before Bush left office. The rollbacks occurred on several fronts: Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act tampering; the curtailing of funds for clean-up programs at hazardous waste sites; the weakening of the Endangered Species Act and removal of animals, such as grizzly bears, from the list of protected species; endorsement of commercial whaling, which causes severe depletion rates because of technologically sophisticated hunting and harvesting apparatuses; the opening of protected lands to mining, logging, and oil and gas drilling; and the elimination of obstacles to mountaintop removal mining. Status quo economics, especially in the energy industry, received preference over support for research and development for green alternatives to the use of finite fossil fuels.

The repudiation of scientific findings on global warming and the reluctance to sponsor studies of its effects on animal species proved demoralizing to science professionals in several federal agencies. The Bush administration was accused of ignoring or suppressing credible scientific studies on numerous environment issues.

Environmental Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)

The environmental problems of the Bush era were balanced by two counterweights. While the environmental movement in the United States went on the defensive during the first decade of the twenty-first century, it also inspired the international upsurge of environmental nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The upsurge in NGOs became an international phenomenon, occurring in many countries, both rich and poor, democratic and despotic. Dedicated groups of citizen activists allied with scientific experts emerged to focus attention on local, national, and global environmental concerns. Impressive NGO fundraising capabilities, aided by the internet, meant independently sponsored scientific research, educational initiatives, the monitoring of hazardous conditions, and remediation of contaminated sites. Such activities often supplemented government projects or acted in place of them in developing nations.

Some NGOs, like Greenpeace or the World Wide Fund for Nature, have supranational status, but others, such as China’s Friends of Nature or Brazil’s SOS Mata Atlântica (SOS Atlantic Forest), exist with localized mandates. Over time, countless efforts to amend environmental damage caused by humans on both small and grand scales created a climate of awareness that Earth was in trouble. In turn, this created increased receptivity for advisories issued about global warming and the need for worldwide cooperation to reverse it.

Al Gore and the Environmental Movement

The power of the individual to make a difference in the world still exists. Before Al Gore was a citizen soldier in Vietnam, journalist, businessperson, senator, or US vice president, he was an environmentalist. In 1967, he enrolled in a life-changing course called "climate science" at Harvard University. During that class, he learned about the seriousness of global warming and the need for action to halt it. As a legislator in Congress for many years, he focused on the need for the United States to redirect its dependence on fossil fuels to renewable energy options. The scientific community had convincingly established that fossil fuel emissions from automobiles and factory smokestacks raised carbon dioxide levels, with dire planetary consequences.

As his political career waned, Gore became an international spokesman for the twin concerns of global warming and the need for green energy relief. Gore used his ability to explain complex scientific issues to the general public in the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth (2006). The film garnered an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 2007, helping to usher in a new wave of environmentalism. A companion book entitled An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It (2006) became a bestseller. However, the greatest recognition of his efforts came in 2007. Gore, along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Kyoto Protocol and Beyond

All of these strands of human endeavor—efforts to maintain the status quo and actively stave off challenges to it, or calls for sweeping, planetary change—converged in the Kyoto Protocol. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) began the process of voluntary emission reduction in 1992. All of the accords and protocols that succeeded it led to the Kyoto Protocol, calling for a mandatory 55 percent global reduction of carbon dioxide based on 1990 levels by all signatories. The United States signed the treaty in 1997 but agreed to only a 6 percent reduction at the time; President Bush refused to ratify the treaty in 2001. A nineteenth century business model based on short-term profit margins that once brought the United States unrivaled prosperity and world hegemony bumped up against twenty-first century reality, in which global interdependence holds sway and all life is threatened by self-indulgence. Despite Bush’s contrarian approach to the environment, several states and cities in the United States enacted Kyoto-inspired provisions to circumvent the last stand of the guardians of old energy. In the meantime, the Kyoto Protocol took effect on February 16, 2005.

As the Bush administration came to an end and a new Democratic president, Barack Obama, took office in 2009, scientific evidence for human contributions to climate change were mounting and forming a consensus in the minds of many—scientists and the public alike—that international action must be taken to avert (or at least prepare for) the more catastrophic effects of global warming. However, the contentiousness surrounding international cooperation was highlighted in December 2009, as representatives of 193 nations met in Copenhagen, Denmark, to decide whether to extend or replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012. Kyoto had obligated only signatory developed (industrialized) nations to meet carbon emissions standards. Some representatives of developing and poorer nations at Copenhagen strongly objected to the new call for all nations to curb emissions, pointing out that the industrialized nations (particularly the United States), with their disproportionately high emissions, were more responsible for climate change and should bear the brunt of its mitigation. Al Gore urged participants to reach an agreement, and the secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Anders Fogh Rasmussen, warned that climate change could lead to crop failure and, in turn, "rebellions which eventually could fuel radical movements, extremism and terrorism."

By the mid-2010s, environmentalism was a familiar buzzword, and, to many, an urgent movement to stop the negative effects of anthropogenic climate change. A consensus of scientists and many research organizations agreed that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, global warming, reliance on fossil fuels, and the many interrelated issues posed perhaps the largest long-term threat to human civilization and ecological diversity. Though the Obama administration generally supported environmental causes—for example, ratifying the Paris Agreement on climate change and designating new parks and other protected areas—some experts felt he did not go far enough or was hampered by an uncooperative Congress. Obama himself prioritized efforts to combat climate change as a major part of his legacy, continually stressing the subject to Congress and the public. However, the progress made and the optimism of the US environmental movement in general were dealt a major setback with the election of Donald Trump as president in November 2016.

Similar to the rollback of environmental legislation and regulations witnessed during George W. Bush's administration in the late 1990s, Trump also supported deregulation and fossil fuel development, leading to major setbacks in the environmental movement once again. Trump's administration was characterized by an association with climate change skeptics and deniers and a favoring of fossil fuel industries. Among the most significant policy changes during Trump's first administration were the rollback of nearly one hundred environmental regulations, including the Clean Power Plan and the Clean Water Rule; withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement; the promotion of fossil fuel extraction through the opening up of federal lands and waters for oil and gas drilling; and the rollback of vehicle emissions standards. While Joe Biden overturned many of these decisions during his presidency (2021–25), many critics warned that Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election and return to office for a second term would again bring major changes to environmental policies in the US, potentially erasing many of the country's efforts to combat climate change in the twenty-first century.

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