Hisory of Environmental Movement
1. What would you include in a brief summary on the history of the environmental movement?
Extreme air pollution resulted in 80 deaths on Thanksgiving Day, 1966. On January 31, 1969, an oil spill occurred off the coast of Santa Barbara etc. took place. on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day took place, bringing the environmental movement to the forefront. The first stage of environmentalism came from visionaries who saw early on in our national history the directions we were taking and the consequences that might ensue. Visionaries like John Muir’s and Gifford Pinchot’s important early steps in American Wildlife Preservation and Conservation. They saw the early warning signs of over-consumption and development and implored us to redirect our habits and energies back to wise use of resources and appreciation of nature. The second stage came half a century later, and brought with it a radical challenge to our cultural ideals of progress and growth without earthly limits. A third generation or wave of environmentalism came quickly after the second, as a confluence of scientific findings, philosophical and spiritual “rethinkings,” global scale events, and intersecting peoples movements. Third wave environmentalism brought conflict, pause, and redirection to the movement. The two primary reasons related to one another were; firstly the confluence of different peoples and movements brought environmental issues to the table from many different corners and secondly the environmental degradation and collapse of ecosystems on a global scale were impossible to ignore, and our politicians were largely ignoring them. The fourth stage was about Rethinking Our Socio-Techno-Cultural Way of Being in the 21st Century. We are in the Environmental Age whether we like it or not. Drastic changes seem inevitable. In the coming years we most likely will have to deal with immense ecological changes on a global scale. Today we must work to engage everyone in environmental
Extreme air pollution resulted in 80 deaths on Thanksgiving Day, 1966. On January 31, 1969, an oil spill occurred off the coast of Santa Barbara etc. took place. on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day took place, bringing the environmental movement to the forefront. The first stage of environmentalism came from visionaries who saw early on in our national history the directions we were taking and the consequences that might ensue. Visionaries like John Muir’s and Gifford Pinchot’s important early steps in American Wildlife Preservation and Conservation. They saw the early warning signs of over-consumption and development and implored us to redirect our habits and energies back to wise use of resources and appreciation of nature. The second stage came half a century later, and brought with it a radical challenge to our cultural ideals of progress and growth without earthly limits. A third generation or wave of environmentalism came quickly after the second, as a confluence of scientific findings, philosophical and spiritual “rethinkings,” global scale events, and intersecting peoples movements. Third wave environmentalism brought conflict, pause, and redirection to the movement. The two primary reasons related to one another were; firstly the confluence of different peoples and movements brought environmental issues to the table from many different corners and secondly the environmental degradation and collapse of ecosystems on a global scale were impossible to ignore, and our politicians were largely ignoring them. The fourth stage was about Rethinking Our Socio-Techno-Cultural Way of Being in the 21st Century. We are in the Environmental Age whether we like it or not. Drastic changes seem inevitable. In the coming years we most likely will have to deal with immense ecological changes on a global scale. Today we must work to engage everyone in environmental