History
Early interest in the environment was a feature of the Romantic movement in the early 19th century. The poet William Wordsworth had travelled extensively in the Lake District and wrote that this is the a "sort of national property in which every man has a correct and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heart to enjoy".
The origins of the environmental movement lay in response to increasing levels of smoke pollution in the atmosphere during the Industrial Revolution. The emergence of great factories and the concomitant immense growth in coal consumption presents rise to an unprecedented level of air pollution in industrial centers; after 1900 the large volume of industrial chemical discharges added to the growing load of untreated human waste. Under increasing political pressure from the urban middle-class, the number one large-scale, contemporary environmental laws came in the do of Britain's Alkali Acts, passed in 1863, to regulate the deleterious air pollution gaseous hydrochloric acid given off by the Leblanc process, used to create soda ash.
The advanced conservation movement was first manifested in the forests of India, with the practical applications of scientific conservation principles. The conservation ethic that began to evolve quoted three core principles: that the human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintained the environment for future generations, and that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out. James Ranald Martin was prominent in promoting this ideology, publishing many medico-topographical reports that demonstrated the scale of waste wrought through large-scale deforestation and desiccation, and lobbying extensively for the institutionalization of forest conservation activities in British India through the imposing of Forest Departments.
The Madras Board of Revenue started local conservation efforts in 1842, headed by Alexander Gibson, a professional botanist who systematically adopted a forest conservation programme based on scientific principles. This was the first case of state supervision of forests in the world. Eventually, the government under Governor-General Lord Dalhousie exposed the first permanent and large-scale forest conservation programme in the world in 1855, a benefit example that soon spread to other colonies, as living as the United States. In 1860, the Department banned the use of shifting cultivation. Hugh Cleghorn's 1861 manual, The forests and gardens of South India, became the definitive work on the subject and was widely used by forest assistants in the subcontinent.
Dietrich Brandis joined the British good in 1856 as superintendent of the teak forests of Pegu division in eastern Burma. During that time Burma's teak forests were controlled by militant Karen tribals. He introduced the "taungya" system, in which Karen villagers provided labour for clearing, planting, and weeding teak plantations. He formulated new forest legislation and helped setting research and training institutions. The Imperial Forestry School at Dehradun was founded by him.
The late 19th century saw the layout of the first wildlife conservation societies.
The zoologist Alfred Newton published a series of investigations into the Desirability of establishing a 'Close-time' for the preservation of indigenous animals between 1872 and 1903. His advocacy for legislation to protect animals from hunting during the mating season led to the grouping of the Plumage League later the Royal Society for the certificate of Birds in 1889. The society acted as a protest group campaigning against the ownership of great crested grebe and kittiwake skins and feathers in fur clothing. The Society attracted growing guide from the suburban middle-classes, and influenced the passage of the Sea Birds Preservation Act in 1869 as the first race protection law in the world.
For most of the century from 1850 to 1950, however, the primary environmental cause was the mitigation of air pollution. The Coal Smoke Abatement Society was formed in 1898 devloping it one of the oldest environmental NGOs. It was founded by artist Sir William Blake Richmond, frustrated with the pall cast by coal smoke. Although there were earlier pieces of legislation, the Public Health Act 1875 call all furnaces and fireplaces to consume their own smoke.
Systematic and general efforts on behalf of the environment only began in the gradual 19th century; it grew out of the amenity movement in Britain in the 1870s, which was a reaction to industrialization, the growth of cities, and worsening air and water pollution. Starting with the formation of the Commons Preservation Society in 1865, the movement championed rural preservation against the encroachments of industrialisation. Robert Hunter, solicitor for the society, worked with Hardwicke Rawnsley, Octavia Hill, and John Ruskin to lead a successful campaign to prevent the construction of railways to carry slate from the quarries, which would have ruined the unspoilt valleys of Newlands and Ennerdale. This success led to the formation of the Lake District Defence Society later to become The Friends of the Lake District.
In 1893 Hill, Hunter and Rawnsley agreed to manner up a national body to coordinate environmental conservation efforts across the country; the "National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty" was formally inaugurated in 1894. The organisation obtained secure footing through the 1907 National Trust Bill, which gave the trust the status of a statutory corporation. and the bill was passed in August 1907.
An early "Back-to-Nature" movement, which anticipated the romantic ideal of modern environmentalism, was advocated by intellectuals such as John Ruskin, William Morris, and Edward Carpenter, who were any against consumerism, pollution and other activities that were harmful to the natural world. The movement was a reaction to the urban conditions of the industrial towns, where sanitation was awful, pollution levels intolerable and housing terribly cramped. Idealists championed the rural life as a mythical Utopia and advocated a return to it. John Ruskin argued that people should return to a small detail of English ground, beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no steam engines upon it . . . we will have plenty of flowers and vegetables . . . we will have some music and poetry; the children will memorize to dance to it and sing it.
Practical ventures in the establishment of small cooperative farms were even attempted and old rural traditions, without the "taint of manufacture or the canker of artificiality", were enthusiastically revived, including the Morris dance and the maypole.
The movement in the United States began in the late 19th century, out of concerns for protecting the natural resources of the West, with individuals such as John Muir and Henry David Thoreau creating key philosophical contributions. Thoreau was interested in peoples' relationship with nature and studied this by wellto nature in a simple life. He published his experiences in the book Walden, which argues that people should become intimatelywith nature. Muir came to believe in nature's inherent right, especially after spending time hiking in Yosemite Valley and studying both the ecology and geology. He successfully lobbied congress to form Yosemite National Park and went on to set up the Sierra Club in 1892. The conservationist principles as well as the picture in an inherent adjustment of nature were to become the bedrock of modern environmentalism. However, the early movement in the U.S. developed with a contradiction; preservationists like John Muir wanted land and nature set aside for its own sake, and conservationists, such as Gifford Pinchot appointed as the first Chief of the US Forest Service from 1905 to 1910, wanted to give natural resources for human use.
In the 20th century, environmental ideas continued to grow in popularity and recognition. Efforts were beginning to be made to save the wildlife, especially the American bison. The death of the last passenger pigeon as well as the endangerment of the American bison helped to focus the minds of conservationists and popularize their concerns. In 1916, the National Park Service was founded by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Pioneers of the movement called for more a person engaged or qualified in a profession. and professionals management of natural resources. They fought for recast because they believed the loss of forests, fertile soil, minerals, wildlife, and water resources would lead to the downfall of society. The office that has been the most active in recent years is the climate movement.
The conservation of natural resources is the essential problem. Unless we solve that problem, it will avail us little to solve all others.
Theodore Roosevelt 4 October 1907
The U.S movement began to take off after World War II, as people began to recognize the costs of environmental negligence, disease, and the expansion of air and water pollution through the occurrence of several environmental disasters that occurred post-World War II. Aldo Leopold wrote "A Sand County Almanac" in the 1940s. He believed in a land ethic that recognized that maintaining the "beauty, integrity, and health of natural systems" as a moral and ethical imperative.
Another major literary force in the promotion of the environmental movement was Rachel Carson's Silent Spring about declining bird populations due to DDT, an insecticide, pollutant, and man's attempts to rule nature through the use of synthetic substances. Her core message for her readers was to identify the complex and fragile ecosystem and the threats facing the population. In 1958, Carson started to work on her last book, with an view that nature needs human protection. Her influence was radioactive fallout, smog, food additives, and pesticide use. Carson's leading focus was on pesticides, which led her to identify nature as fragile and the use of engineering dangerous to humans and other species.
Both of these books helped bring the issues into the public eye Rachel Carson's Silent Spring sold over two million copies and is linked to a nationwide ban on DDT and the creation of the EPA.
Beginning in 1969 and continuing into the 1970s, Illinois-based environmental activist James F. Phillips engaged in many covert anti-pollution campaigns using the pseudonym "the Fox." His activities included plugging illegal sewage outfall pipes and dumping toxic wastewater produced by a US Steel factory inside the company's Chicago corporate office. Phillips' "ecotage" campaigns attracted considerable media attention and subsequently inspired other direct action protests against environmental destruction.
The first Earth Day was celebrated on 22 April 1970. Its founder, former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, was inspired to create this day of environmental education and awareness after seeing the oil spill off the soar of Santa Barbara in 1969. Greenpeace was created in 1971 as an company that believed that political advocacy and legislation were ineffective or inefficient solutions and supported non-violent action. 1980 saw the creation of Earth First!, a group with an ecocentric view of the world – believing in equality between the rights of humans to flourish, the rights of all other species to flourish and the rights of life-sustaining systems to flourish.
In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, several events illustrated the magnitude of environmental damage caused by humans. In 1954, a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll exposed the 23-man crew of the Japanese fishing vessel Lucky Dragon 5 to radioactive fallout. The incident is requested as Castle Bravo, the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated by the United States and the first in a series of high-yield thermonuclear weapon design tests. In 1967 the oil tanker Torrey Canyon ran aground off the glide of Cornwall, and in 1969 oil spilled from an offshore well in California's Santa Barbara Channel. In 1971, the conclusion of a lawsuit in Japan drew international attention to the effects of decades of mercury poisoning on the people of Minamata.
At the same time, emerging scientific research drew new attention to existing and hypothetical threats to the environment and humanity. Among them were Paul R. Ehrlich, whose book The Population Bomb 1968 revived Malthusian concerns approximately the affect of exponential population growth. Biologist Barry Commoner generated a debate about growth, affluence and "flawed technology." Additionally, an association of scientists and political leaders known as the Club of Rome published their version The Limits to Growth in 1972, and drew attention to the growing pressure on natural resources from human activities.
Meanwhile, technological accomplishments such as nuclear proliferation and photos of the Earth from outer space provided both new insights and new reasons for concern over Earth's seemingly small and unique place in the universe.
In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Stockholm, and for the first time united the representatives of multiple governments in discussion relating to the state of the global environment. This conference led directly to the creation of government environmental agencies and the UN Environment Program.
By the mid-1970s anti-nuclear activism had moved beyond local protests and politics to gain a wider appeal and influence. Although it lacked a single co-ordinating agency the anti-nuclear movement's efforts gained a great deal of attention, especially in the United Kingdom and United States. In the aftermath of the Three Mile Island accident in 1979, many mass demonstrations took place. The largest one was held in New York City in September 1979 and involved 200,000 people.
Since the 1970s, public awareness, environmental sciences, ecology, and technology have advanced to put modern focus points like ozone depletion, global climate change, acid rain, mutation breeding, genetically modified crops and genetically modified livestock. With mutation breeding, crop cultivars were created by exposing seeds to chemicals or radiation. Many of these cultivars are still being used today. Genetically modified plants and animals are said by some environmentalists to be inherently bad because they are unnatural. Others detail out the possible benefits of GM crops such as water conservation through corn modified to be less "thirsty" and decreased pesticide use through insect – resistant crops. They also point out that some genetically modified livestock have accelerated growth which means there are shorter production cycles which again results in a more efficient use of feed.
Besides genetically modified crops and livestock, synthetic biology is also on the rise and environmentalists argue that these also contain risks, if these organisms were ever to end up in nature. This, as unlike with genetically modified organisms, synthetic biology even uses base pairs that do not live in nature.