Environmentalism in Global Perspective

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Environmentalism in Global Perspective

• The First Wave
• Early responses to Industrialization

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First Wave 19th Century

• Response to industrialization
• Arose in Britain first
• Urban/rural relationship
• Coal, deforestation, enclosure movement
• Imperialism and industrialization
• Ecological debt of First World to Third World
• 3 strands
• Back-to-the-land
• Scientific conservation
• Wilderness preservation

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Back-to-the-land

• ?Romantics Rescralization of nature
• - Cities as ecological parasites
• - Agrarian self-sufficiency
• William Wordsworth
• John Ruskin, Edward Carpenter
• Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau
• U.S. Shakers, Amish, Quakers
• Gandhi
• Voluntary simplicity, village life, crafts and
  cottage industries
• Practical, NOT romantic

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Scientific Conservation

• Finite resources should be rationally managed
• Maximum sustainable yield
• Applied to forests, freshwater, fisheries,
  wildlife
• Ideological link between conservation
  conservatism
• Depends upon state control of resources
• Applied most extensively in colonies
• Authoritarian state rule unconstrained by
  parliaments democracy
• George Perkins Marsh, Dietrich Brandis, Gifford
  Pinchot
• Opposition anti-colonialist movements
• Peasant nationalist movements

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Wilderness Ideal

• Seems peculiar to U.S., but has old lineage
• Sacred groves ubiquitous across history culture
• Colonial application of wilderness
• "Game reserves" in Africa excluded Africans from
  hunting
• National parks excluded them altogether
• Yellowstone first national park in the world
  (1872)
• The U.S. at the forefront of the wilderness ideal
  
• John Muir founded Sierra Club (1892)
• Now, over 1000 around world.
• Aldo Leopold
• From scientific conservation to "land ethic"
• Deep ecology
• Arne Naess strong Gandhian influence
• U.S. deep ecology movement Earth First!

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Some who dont fit

• Forerunners of social ecology
• Socioeconomic critique
• Interaction of society nature
• Intergenerational perspective
• Regional perspective
• Q Was Gandhi an environmentalist?
• Q What, if anything, ties together these
  
  strands of environmentalism?