THE PoLITICS OF SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT The conservation movement nudged gov ernment into the role of nature's steward In addition to creating the National Park Service in the late 1800s and early 1900s the federal government established the national forest system and the Forest Service intro duced natural resource management and large scale irrigation projects and estab lished a national wildlife refuge system Theodore Roosevelt president of the United States from 1901 to 1909 made conservation a cornerstone of his administration A population surge following World War II put pressure on undeveloped areas and thus heightened awareness of the strains on nature and raised concerns about air and water pollution radiation and pesticide poi soning Biologist Rachel Carson s best selling book Silent Spring 1962 created worldwide awareness of the dangers of environmental pollution especially pesticide use The envi ronmental movement's influence expanded into courtrooms in 1965 when the conser vation group Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference successfully challenged New York's utility company Consolidated Edison over its plans to build a power plant near the Hudson River Politicians quickly caught on and environmentalism became a vital
INTRODUCTION campaign issue in the United States in the late 1960s In other countries environmen talists made significant political progress beginning in the 1970s and 1980s reen party candidates won national offices in Europe as well as in Australia New Zealand Mexico and Brazil among other countries Endangered species protection is a criti cal element of environmentalism Forest destruction wetland drainage pollu tion pesticides and other dangers have threatened the survival of plant and ani mal species worldwide Elephants are just one high profile example They have been reduced to critically low numbers because of uncontrolled killing for their tusks The International Union for Conservation of Nature IUCN the largest conservation organization in the world publishes infor mation on endangered species worldwide in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species A quick glance at magazine racks or book shelves confirms that green living is part of the public consciousness Despite this prog ress however environmentalists are hardly complacent and they continue their efforts in the political realm They know that for widespread environmental change to take hold politics must be part of the
CHAPTER 1 ENVIRONMENTALISM AN OVERVIEW Nhe political and intellectual move ment called environmentalism seeks to improve and protect the quality of the natural environment It advocates curtail ing or ending human activities that harm the environment The movement also seeks to change political and economic systems so that human societies can prosper without causing pollution and other environmental damage The term environment is broad as it refers to all the natural world In various ways envi ronmentalists call for protecting or improving the quality of the air the water and the land including the conservation of the soil and important natural areas such as rainforests and wetlands Environmentalists are also con cerned with protecting the biosphere which consists of the animals plants and other living things and the ecosystems in which they live Environmentalists aim to preserve and care for air water and land as well as the animals plants and other living things that live there Shutterstock com IO
