Environmentalism Before the Environmental Movement

Concern about the human impact on the environment has a long history. Plato, for example, was not concerned with the environment per se, but more focused on what constitutes the good society. Nonetheless ideas about environmental sustainability can be identified in his writing. Mark Stone suggests that ‘in Plato’s view just societies are environmentally sustainable’ (Stone 2018: 106). Plato argues, in the Republic, that the civilised society needs to produce enough resources to sustain its citizens. Plato argues that the citizens should not seek excessive luxuries. He suggests that if the citizens demand too many material possessions ‘the territory which was formerly enough to support us will now be too small’ (Plato 373d in Lee 1974: 123), and this would inevitably entail conflict. Whilst Plato suggests that sustainability is a logical corollary of the just society, later commentators like Murray Bookchin (1921–2006) suggest that sustainability is not subsequent to social justice, but inextricably entwined.

In the late 18^th century there was a concern about the depletion of forests in Europe. Wood was a crucial commodity in this early industrial period, and there was a panic about the shortage of wood across Europe. This led to the idea of forest management, rather than uncontrolled destruction. Radkau points out that in Germany ‘around 1800 “sustainability” (Nachhaltigkeit) became a magic word (Radkau 2014:13). However, this was primarily an economic argument about the lack of affordable timber and firewood rather than a concern for environmental degradation.

A little later in the US, Gifford Pinchot made the distinction between wanton felling and the careful management of timber resource (see my post on John Muir). The idea of resource management informs the later concept of what has come to be known as sustainable development.

Industrialisation resulted in terrible pollution. B.W. Clapp calls the early industrial period the age of smoke and smells. The industrial revolution was primarily powered by coal. For example, it is difficult to imagine what the air quality was like in Stoke on Trent, the heart of the potteries, which in its heyday had around 4,000 bottle kilns all fired by coal. In addition, much transport was powered by coal and many people cooked and heated their houses by burning coal.

Ralph Pite (1996) suggests that the romantics poets in Britain, such as William Wordsworth (1770 – 1850), can be seen as espousing an ecological point of view. For example, Wordsworth wrote in his autobiographical poem The Prelude:

Wordsworth believed that salvation lay through engagement with the natural world, and not through human artifices.

Similarly, the Transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862), In his 1862 essay Walking, writes:

There has long been an ambivalence about science, technology and industrialisation. On the one hand there is no doubt that science, technology and industrialisation has bought many benefits, but they also have had many harmful repercussions. Post World War II there were numerous high-profile incidences widely that challenged any faith in the unalloyed benefits of science. The most obvious was the proliferation of nuclear weapons that could potentially destroy the world, and this created an ambivalence about nuclear power.

To give just two further examples:

1. Thalidomide was a drug developed in the mid 1950s and prescribed for anxiety. It was also given to pregnant women for morning sickness. Thalidomide was prescribed in 46 countries around the world. However, thalidomide caused severe birth defects, which affected over 10,000 births. This was one of the first instances which it was recognised that scientific fallibility had global consequences.
2. In 1967 the oil tanker the Torrey Canyon hit the rocks off the coast of Cornwall and spilt 10,000 tons of crude oil, which polluted the beaches and sea. Phil Macnaghten and John Urry suggest that this environmental disaster was ‘a symbolic landmark event in the emergence of the UK environmental discourse’ (Macnaghtan and Urry 1998: 49).
   

The idea that we inhabit a single planet was visually represented in 1968 with William Anders’ photograph Earthrise, taken whilst orbiting the moon in Apollo 8. John Hannigan suggests:

The single most effective environmental message of the century was totally inadvertent: the 1969 [sic] view from the moon of a fragile spaceship earth’. (cited in Garrard 2023: 188)

Perhaps even more significant was the photograph of planet earth released by NASA in 1972, that is widely referred to as the Blue Marble. This iconic photograph, which is reputed to be the most reproduced photograph ever, not only emphasised the idea of earth as a single place, but also conveyed the idea of the vulnerability, beauty and preciousness of the planet in the featureless vastness of space. This period saw the prominence of metaphors such as ‘spaceship earth’; ‘a global village’; ‘lifeboat earth’, that emphasised the singularity and precariousness of, and mutual responsibility for our planetary home.

Frank Zelko, in his history of Greenpeace observes ‘the new Greenpeace-inspired environmentalists wore tie dyed tea shirts and long hair’ which was in stark contrast to the conservationist style of the Sierra Club hikers of ‘corduroys and cardigans’ (Zelko 2013: 5).

Counterculture generally refers to any group that challenges the mores and values of mainstream society. The counterculture more specifically refers to the dissenting movement of the 1960s. The 1960s counterculture predominantly involved young people who are often referred to as hippies. The hippies shared many common values and tried to find alternative ways of life that were often in opposition to the lifestyle of their parents. Theodore Roszak, who is largely credited with coining the term counterculture, suggested that

The environmental movement would surely have never gotten beyond its conservationist orientation if there had not been those who were willing to ponder the limits of urban industrial society’ (Roszak 1995: xxvii).

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Perhaps, the most important individual for the embryonic environmental movement from the counterculture was Stewart Brand, who was largely responsible for NASA releasing photographs of planet Earth from space. Brand suggests that whilst on LSD he came to the realisation ‘that seeing an image of Earth from space would change a lot of things’ (Brand cited in Kirk 2007: 40). In 1966 Brand distributed small badges with the legend ‘why haven’t we seen a photograph of the whole Earth yet?’. This, according to legend, encouraged NASA to release images of earth from space into the public domain.

In 1968 Brand published the first Whole Earth Catalog, which appropriately had one of the first photographs of Earth from space to enter the public domain. The Whole Earth Catalog described itself as ‘an evaluation and access device’ (Whole Earth Catalog 1968). The Catalog printed regular editions until May 1971, and then was published sporadically until its 30^th Anniversary in 1998.  The Whole Earth Catalog is a cornucopia of ideas, reviews of books and products aimed at helping people become more self-sufficient. Underlying the advocacy for a more self-sufficient lifestyle was a critique of industrialisation, urbanisation, economies of scale and a concern to safeguard the planet.

There was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above green fields.
Carson 2000: 21

However, this rural idyll is silenced when:

A strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death.
Carson 2000:21

The Limits to Growth is a report that was written by a group of scientists from MIT. This report was sponsored by The Club of Rome, ‘a group of thirty individuals from ten countries’ who gathered together to discuss ‘the present and future predicament of man’. (Meadows et al 1972: 23)

The Limits to Growth was one of the first uses of computer modelling. The report looked at the interaction between five global factors:

1. Rapid population growth
2. Agricultural production
3. Depletion of non-renewable resources
4. Accelerating industrialisation
5. Deteriorating environment

Friends of the Earth (FoE) was founded in 1969 by David Brower, who had been a member of the Sierra Club. It quickly became an international network of affiliated groups. The UK branch of FoE was founded in 1971 and came to prominence when it dumped 1,500 non-returnable bottles outside the HQ of Schweppes. In 1971, the embryonic Greenpeace set sail in an old fishing boat to try and halt the US from testing nuclear weapons on Amchitka Island off the coast of Alaska.

In 1969 the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution was constituted to advise the UK Government on environmental issues. In 1970 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was founded in the US. Also in 1970 Barry Commoner, an ecologist and environmentalist, appeared on the cover of Time, which reported that ‘the national concern over the environment has reached an unprecedented level of intensity’ (cited in Franz 2001). Perhaps the most significant point, that demonstrates the coalescence of environmental concerns into an identifiable environmental movement was the1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm, which produced a declaration about the global nature of environmental issues:

The protection environment and improvement of the human is a major issue which affects the well-being of peoples and economic development throughout the world.