Environmental Movement

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Environmental movement addresses environmental issues., The term environmental movement includes the conservation and green movements centered on ecology, health, and human rights..

The environmental movement in the United States with the conservation movement and the establishment of Hot Springs National Park in 1832. Henry David Thoreau, John Muir and George Perkins Marsh were the early leaders of conservation movement and thus the environmental movement.

The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment which was held in Stockholm in 1972 started discussions relating to the state of the global environment. This Stockholm conference led to the creation of environmental agencies and the UN Environment Program. The United States passed new legislation such as the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act which laid the foundations for current environmental standards.

This book 'Silent Spring' was an early call to arms for the environmental movement. Ozone depletion, global climate change, acid rain, and the potentially harmful genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are now the focus of environmental movements.

"Give Earth a Chance": The Environmental Movement and the Sixties
Adam Rome
Journal of American History [www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/90.2/rome.html]
In 1969 the Environmental Action for Survival Committee at the University of Michigan began to sell buttons with a slogan that played off a rallying cry common in the protests against the Vietnam War. Instead of "Give Peace a Chance," the buttons urged Americans to "Give Earth a Chance." Newsweek soon asked if the buttons might be symbols of a new age of conservation. By spring 1970, when the nation celebrated the first Earth Day, the slogan was ubiquitous. In an Earth Day march in the nation's capital, for example, thousands of people joined the folk singers Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs in a great refrain: "All we are saying," they sang, "is give earth a chance."
The popularity of the "Give Earth a Chance" slogan was not happenstance. The rise of the environmental movement owed much to the events of the 1960s. Yet scholars have not thus far done enough to place environmentalism in the context of the times. The literature on the sixties slights the environmental movement, while the work on environmentalism neglects the political, social, and cultural history of the sixties.

Thinking Globally, Acting Locally: Transnational Environmental Movement Organizations' Involvement in Local Campaigns
Zavestoski, Stephen
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association
Abstract: The labor, environmental, economic, and health consequences of globalization have been well documented. Less clear are the ways in which the same forces of globalization that expose more and more people around the world to environmental health risks are also creating new networks of environmental health activists that link local health social movement struggles to a global network of environmental health activism. This paper reports on research into the roles transnational environmental movement organizations play in local and national campaigns. By examining three campaigns in India and one campaign in Vietnam, I attempt to illustrate how strategies and resources available at the local level influence the relationships that emerge between local and transnational environmental organizations.

The Rhetoric of the Environmental Movement
by Ronald Hamowy | Posted on Saturday, May 20, 2006 [mises.org/story/2119]
The essay attempts to touch on one aspect of modern environmentalism and to examine it against the backdrop of the values associated with a truly liberal society. What I hope to do is to explore certain traits common to the rhetoric of the environmental movement that I find particularly inimical to rational discourse and that serve only to support untenable and fallacious conclusions and recommendations that, if accepted, would prove devastating to civilization. These center, first, around a profound misuse of the term "rights"; second, around the notion that men in primitive pre-technological societies live in harmony with the environment while modern man is antagonistic and destructive of nature's resources; and, finally, that technology itself is, by its very nature, toxic.

THE AMERICAN ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT: SURVIVING THROUGH DIVERSITY
Stacy J. Silveira
[www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/law/lwsch/.../28.../07_TXT.htm]
Abstract: This Note examines the transformation of the American environmental movement into a social movement. First, it provides a history of the American environmental movement. The environmental movement is traced from its origins as an upper-class movement with a wilderness-centered ideology, to its transformation into a richer more diverse membership and an ideology inclusive of the urban environment. Next, the theoretical underpinnings of the environmental movement in social movement theory are highlighted. Finally, the question of whether grassroots environmental groups should protest or litigate, and how the legal system can be strategically used by grassroots environmental groups, is examined.
Introduction: The rise of grassroots environmentalism within the environmental movement illustrates the transformation of environmentalism as an ideology into a full-fledged social movement. As a social movement, the environmental movement has reached its apex with the rise of grassroots environmentalism.1 Grassroots environmentalism, fueled by anger, energy, and a commitment to democratic processes, has strengthened the environmental movement by introducing diversity and expanding the concept of environmentalism.2 Indeed, these groups have emerged to impact both the environmental movement [*PG498]and the public consciousness through direct action and protest strategies.3
This Note examines the complex interplay between grassroots environmentalism, protest strategies, and the legal system. Part I provides a history of the evolution of the environmental movement. This section conceptually divides environmentalism into four eras: (a) conservation and preservation; (b) modern environmentalism; (c) mainstream environmentalism; and (d) the rise of grassroots environmentalism.4 In Part II, the theoretical underpinnings of the environmental movement are discussed. First, the endurance of the environmental movement as a social movement is examined, focusing on the structure of the environmental movement. Second, grassroots environmentalism is situated within social movement theory’s dominant paradigm, New Social Movement theory. Finally, Part III discusses the strategies and tactics of grassroots environmentalism, focusing on the complex interplay of direct action protests and the legal system. The legal system, rich in symbolism and cultural resonance, can be used to communicate a movement’s message to the American public and to increase the legitimacy of that message.

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