There are 18 nuclear warheads surrounding Tucson
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I wrote the following essay for my environmental history course. It is not particularly well done, but I found the topic thought provoking. Some reflection:
What is social change? How do my biases affect what I am willing to consider progressive and what I would call retrogressive? When assessing the actions of others, do the results or intentions matter more? Is there such a stark difference between the two? All of these questions, of course, have textbook answers. Objective scholarship requires at least the pretense of non-judgementalism.
But on a personal level, when I’m alone, these questions aren’t so easy. I’m used to easy answers. In a sense, environmental history is a much more emotionally complicated field than, say, political history, which I can often (to myself and not with my “academic” hat on) condemn. I like comdemning things. It is emotionally satisfying to say with certainty that putting radioactive material in orphans’ oatmeal is wrong in every realisticly conceivable situation. It sets up ethical bars against which to measure other actions. However, when it comes to examining other, finer issues like how to deal with toxic waste, it can no longer be judgement, but must be evaluation- not from heaven up high, but from the grain scales of the street. The moral high ground’s gone in a sink hole.
But if there is one thing that I like more than telling people that they are horrible blights upon humanity, it’s being confused about it all. It’s leaving open the possiblity that I myself might also be implicated in the crimes which I, at first glance, might condemn. Call it the Catholic (or the ego) in me, but I enjoy feeling like the holiest devil in town.
Who is Moving Which Society? Conservation and Environmentalism as Social Movements
Nature. This nebulous word has been a powerful factor in shaping American life throughout the 20th century. Like other generalizations, it has the ability to mean different things to different people. Nature has been “conserved,” “preserved,” “reclaimed,” “raped,” and even given its own international day of celebration. It is has intellectual, physical, and social dimensions which are related and constantly shifting, at once the subject and the object of change. The importance of nature as an idea, a place, and form of social control (or change) can be seen in the similarities and differences of movements claiming to represent the interests of nature and of humans over time.
But were efforts such as the conservation movement of the early 20th century or the environmental movement of the post-WWII years movements for social change, or were aimed at preserving the status quo? In order to answer this question, other questions must be asked first. What is the “status quo” and does it really always remain static? Who is defining “nature” and how are they applying those definitions? What constitutes social change- is it physical like setting aside a national park, socio-political like women’s Audubon Societies, or intellectual like shifting from a view of nature as a resource to nature as having inherent value? For the purposes of a brief assessment of whether the conservation and environmental movements were movements for social change, it will be assumed that the status quo tends to refer to a capitalist, individualistic, stratified, white male-dominated society in which nature is seen as a resource or instrument of that social order. Social change is measured by how close to and in what ways the goals of a movement concord with the status quo. Using that criteria and judged against one another, the conservation movement is less of a social movement than the environmental movement because the latter challenged the established order intellectually, socially, and physically, although neither of these movements can be called purely conservative or revolutionary.
Conservation movements of the late 19th and early 20th century operated within the socially accepted framework towards preserving the dominant social order, although variations in the movement at times challenged it. Forestry and the drive for the creation of national parks is an example of the former. As defined by Gifford Pinchot, a scientific forester, conservation was the “use of the natural resources for the greatest good of the greatest number for the longest time” (Pinchot in Merchant, 330). For men like Pinchot, nature was a resource to be used by the public, but managed by professionals. The question of the “possible use or waste of natural resources” characterized Pinchot’s conservationism (Pinchot in Merchant, 329). Nature was also a national resource bound up with the power and prestige of the United States and the problem of conservation was, according to Theodore Roosevelt, “the problem of national efficiency, the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the Nation” (Roosevelt in Merchant, 321). Forest conservation did not aim to change values held about the land, but was about “safety” and “continuance.” If it did aim to change the way the environment was handled, it was to transfer the responsibilities of forestry from the private to the public level by delegating forestry responsibilities to the federal government. All the same, the conservationists did manage to enact the National Parks Act of 1916 that set aside land for public use. At the same time, however, this land could be used for lumber, grazing, and hunting. Similarly, hunting clubs such as the Boone and Crockett Club (estb. 1887), wished to set aside land for elite sport hunting. In both of these cases, the people defining nature and wishing to use it bring their elite, educated values to the movement. Often times, these values resulted in policies that perpetuateed social divisions, such as when the bag limits of the hunting clubs focused negative attention on those hunters with no rules, such as Italian immigrants (Morrissey, 3/25/08). Embedded in forestry and hunting clubs were the class, race, and gender assumptions of their members who by their social status tended to benefit from the dominant order.
On the other hand, women’s clubs challenged that order by forging a place in politics for women. At the same time that they were progressive by involving women in politics, they were conservative in adopting the rhetoric and roles assigned to women. They used their image as caretakers of the home to press for change. They applied the language of domesticity to broader social issues, drawing a parallel between the home and the nation. As Lydia Adams-Williams stated, it fell to women “to educate public sentiment to save from rapacious waste and complete exhaustion the resources upon which depend the welfare of the home, the children, and the children’s children” (Merchant, 345). Statements like these illustrate that they were still concerned with nature as a resource to be conserved. Clubs such as the Audubon Society campaigned relentlessly to protect birds from use in women’s hats. They used a variety of arguments, such as that it was amoral to kill an animal for fashion, that wearing dead animals was a sign of barbarism (an argument playing off of class tensions), and that birds were economically valuable as living being. As Mrs. Marion Crocker put it in 1912 when she asked women to choose hats without feathers when shopping, it was “not sentiment,” but “pure economics” which motivated the request (Crocker 324). Their campaign was ultimately successful with the Tariff Act of 1913 which outlawed the importation of wild bird feathers into the United States (Merchant, 346). Thus, they achieved concrete results towards the end of conservation, similar to the forestry’s victory with the National Parks Act. They also made important advances for women’s roles in political life using arguments about nature. At the same time, however, they did not seek to change the underlying capitalist view of nature as a resource, challenge the view of women as innate nurturers, nor address power divisions over access and control of nature across race and class. Like the elitist Pinchot and the wealthy, urban hunting clubs, the Audubon Societies carried their cultural baggage with them.
The environmental movement that grew up after WWII had an important difference from the conservation movement: it attempted to challenge the established order. This challenge at times came in the form of direct confrontation, at other in the form of gradual pressure for change. While it too carries the baggage of its proponents, it shares the post-modern impulse for self-reflection and self-correction. Like the conservation movement, the environmental movement was not a homogenous group, but its different manifestations shared common goals and derived many of its positions and ambitions from the unique vantage point of the Post-WWII years. They sought to change the way that humans related to their natural environment. Unlike the conservationists, the environmentalists believed that nature had value outside of its use to humans. It drew from the arguments of John Muir, who took the side opposite of Pinchot in the Hetch Hetchy dam debate of 1912 by calling for preservation over development (http://www.sfmuseum.org/john/muir14.html). Part of this drive to see nature as inherently valuable derived from ideas of people such as Arthur Tansley who saw organic and inorganic factors as being “components” of a system that worked together (Tansley in Merchant, 434). Working off of the notion that humans were part of a system, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was a startling expose of how seemingly beneficial chemicals such as DDT, which had become a part of everyday life during and after the war, could have negative consequences beyond what humans could anticipate or control. The widespread use of DDT and the faith of people that science led to improvement in their life made Carson’s work on DDT in Clear Lake, California even more shocking (Morrissey, 5/1/08). The realization that environmental degradation in an area could affect more than just the people immediately around it led many to pressure for change. For example, Barry Commoner, a scientist who worked for the United States Atomic Energy Commission, became alarmed when scientists realized that fall out from a nuclear explosion in Nevada could reach New York. Much closer to home, radioactive materials such as strontium 90 could reach children by entering the food system (Commoner in Merchant, 475). Although the federal government was reacting to a number of Cold War exigencies, the arguments of organizations such as the Committee of Concerned Scientist with people like Commoner probably influenced the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 which ended nuclear tests in the atmosphere. More than anything, this transformation in the way of viewing nature was at the heart of environmentalism’s force as social change. It challenged the human-centric model of the earlier conservation movement and shifted the emphasis from “wise use” of nature to wise living as part of that nature.
Attempts for social change by distributing the power levers of environmental policy and broadening the scope of the society to be included in its benefits went hand in hand with the intellectual challenge of the established order. Harnessing the energy and social awareness of those decades also linked their environmental concerns to broader social issues, such as race, gender, and class. By and large, the environmental movement was a grassroots movement, empowering people of diverse backgrounds to address the ways in which control of the environment affected different parts of society. One thing that people noticed was that the adverse affects of environmental degradation disproportionately affected marginalized members of society. For instance, in Niagara Falls, New York, chemical dumping in the Love Canal by the steel companies in WWII contaminated the ground and well-water. The hazards of these chemicals primarily affected blacks and poorer people who lived in segregated neighborhoods closest to the sites of the dumping (Morrisey, 5/1/08). Although it was not until the 1970’s that the federal government intervened, the case of Love Canal brought national attention to the notion of environmental justice.
At the same time, however, certain aspects of certain groups within the movement did not challenge the established order. One example of this complexity is in the Wilderness Act of 1964 which defined wilderness as a place where “the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain” (Wilderness Act of 1964 in Merchant, 359). In fact, as William Cronon argues, the very idea of wilderness is a social construction and there is “nothing natural about the concept of wilderness.” The underlying notion of wilderness as separate from man, as a “primeval” place is not new (Cronon in Merchant, 385). This definition of wilderness has been applied in an exclusionary way to limit access and control of the environment. For example, Native Americans such as the Blackfeet have been accused of “poaching” in Glacier National Park, their traditional lands (Cronon in Merchant, 385). The power to define nature and to apply that definition is firmly routed in the makeup of society. Despite these hang-ups, the post-modern drive for self-inspection and self-criticism has been an important tool in constantly reworking the definitions and goals of environmentalism. While the environmental movement has at times struggled with the cultural baggage which it brings bare upon a problem, it nonetheless has generally aimed to improve quality of life for all living things through environmental action.
To bring it back to the core of the issue, the ways in which nature is defined and controlled has physical, intellectual, and social ramifications. It can uphold the established order, or it can challenge it. It can reform it, or it can revolutionize it. Moreover, the established order itself has physical, intellectual, and social implications. Movements by definition are groups of people working together towards a common goal. Despite shared ideas, variations still exist among different sectors of the movement. Both the conservation and environmentalist movements at times advocated social change. It is argued above that the environmentalist movement did so on more levels than the conservation movement. What becomes clear is that each attempt to manipulate the environment, or the understanding of the environment, is a push for a set of ideas and values that has effects far beyond the immediate goals. As part of an interconnected system, the ideas about and actions toward nature are an important aspect in understanding how the environment has been an object and subject of social change.
