Environmentalism

• 1. Introduction

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  Environmentalism is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement about supporting life, habitats, and surroundings. In 1272, King Edward I of England issued a proclamation in London banning the burning and sale of what he called sea-coal. The fuel had become so common that its smoke turned into a prevalent annoyance throughout the city. Edward's order is one of the oldest signs of a concern that keeps reappearing across centuries and continents. How did a worry about smoke and trees grow into a movement spanning religion, science, law, and street protest? Why is it represented by the colour green, and why has that colour been borrowed by marketers for a tactic called greenwashing? Who decides what a proper balance between humans and natural systems looks like, when even environmentalists disagree about the answer? The questions reach from ancient India to a Swedish parliament, and the people answering them include kings, biologists, and a schoolgirl with a sign.

• 2. Ancient Roots

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  Jainism, a religion from ancient India revived by Mahavira in the 6th century BC, holds the earliest ideas of environmental protectionism. Mahavira taught a symbiosis between all living beings and the five elements of earth, water, air, fire, and space. His emphasis on protecting life through nonviolence offers a view compatible with much of later environmental activism.

  In the 630s AD, the Caliph Abu Bakr commanded his army to bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, and to slay none of the enemy's flock except for food. Across the 9th to 13th centuries, Islamic medical treatises took up pollution as a subject. Writers including Al-Kindi, Al-Razi, Avicenna, and Ibn al-Nafis examined air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination, and the mishandling of municipal solid waste. Some even assessed the environmental impact of particular places.

  Within the Catholic tradition, the friar Francis of Assisi expressed a mystical reverence for nature as early as 1224. In his poem Canticle of the Sun, he praised what he called Sister Mother Earth, who sustains us and governs us and who produces varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs. He questioned mankind's dominance over the environment and urged thanksgiving for a divine presence within it. Centuries later, King Philip II of Spain ordered the conservation of Spanish forests, warning in 1582 of the great disservice their depletion would do to future generations.

• 3. Smoke And Statute

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  Britain's Alkali Acts, passed in 1863, were the first large-scale modern environmental laws. They regulated the gaseous hydrochloric acid given off by the Leblanc process, which was used to produce soda ash. The origins of the environmental movement lay in a response to rising smoke pollution during the Industrial Revolution.

  Great factories and a surge in coal consumption brought an unprecedented level of air pollution to industrial centers. After 1900, large volumes of industrial chemical discharges joined a growing load of untreated human waste. In industrial cities, local experts and reformers, especially after 1890, identified the degradation and launched grass-roots movements demanding reform. The highest priority typically went to water and air pollution.

  The late 19th century also brought the first wildlife conservation laws. 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 push to protect animals from hunting during the mating season helped form the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. It also influenced the Sea Birds Preservation Act of 1869, described as the first nature protection law in the world.

• 4. The American Wilderness

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  John Muir came to believe in nature's inherent right after hiking in Yosemite Valley and studying its ecology and geology. He lobbied congress to form Yosemite National Park and set up the Sierra Club in 1892. Alongside Henry David Thoreau, he made key philosophical contributions to a movement that began in the United States in the late 19th century, out of concern for protecting the natural resources of the West.

  Thoreau studied people's relationship with nature by living close to it in a simple life. He published his experiences in the book Walden, arguing that people should become intimately close with nature. The conservationist principles, together with a belief in nature's inherent right, became the bedrock of modern environmentalism.

  In 1916, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson founded the National Park Service. Pioneers of the movement called for more efficient and professional management of natural resources. They feared that the destruction of forests, fertile soil, minerals, wildlife, and water would lead to the downfall of society. A less common view, raised by Richard Grove in a 1990 publication, traces some roots of early environmentalism to concern about Western economic forces and colonization on tropical environments.

• 5. A Decade Of Alarm

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  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 detonation, known as Castle Bravo, was the largest thermonuclear device ever set off by the United States. An oil tanker ran aground off Cornwall in 1967, and in 1969 oil spilled from an offshore well in California's Santa Barbara Channel. In 1971, a lawsuit in Japan drew international attention to decades of mercury poisoning at Minamata.

  Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring traced declining bird populations to DDT, an insecticide and pollutant. It cataloged the impacts of indiscriminate spraying and questioned releasing large amounts of chemicals without understanding their effects on health and ecology. The book suggested DDT and other pesticides might cause cancer and threaten wildlife, particularly birds. It sold over two million copies.

  Paul R. Ehrlich revived Malthusian fears in his 1968 book The Population Bomb. The biologist Barry Commoner opened a debate about growth, affluence, and what he called flawed technology. In 1972, the Club of Rome published The Limits to Growth, warning of mounting pressure on natural resources. Public concern over Carson's findings led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, which banned the agricultural use of DDT in the US in 1972.

• 6. Movements Take Shape

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  Greenpeace was created in 1971 by people who believed political advocacy and legislation were ineffective or inefficient and who supported non-violent action. Friends of the Earth formed as well, alongside local groups such as the Wyoming Outdoor Council, founded in 1967. From 1962 to 1998, the environmental movement founded 772 national organizations in the United States.

  The Chipko movement formed in India under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, led by Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Sunderlal Bahuguna, and local leaders. Members offered peaceful resistance to deforestation by literally hugging trees, which gave rise to the term tree huggers. Chipko translates as an open call to hug. Their slogan, ecology is permanent economy, proved very influential.

  The first Earth Day was celebrated on the 22nd of April 1970, created to give awareness to environmental issues. Its founder, former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, was inspired after seeing the 1969 oil spill off Santa Barbara. On the 21st of March 1971, United Nations Secretary-General U Thant spoke of a spaceship Earth, pointing to the planet's ecosystem services and our obligation to protect it. Earth Day is now celebrated in more than 192 countries every year.

  Green parties also arose. The United Tasmania Group of Australia and the Values Party of New Zealand were the world's first parties to campaign on a predominantly environmental platform. In Europe, the Popular Movement for the Environment was founded in 1972 in the Swiss canton of Neuchatel. PEOPLE, founded in Britain in February 1973, eventually became the Green Party. The signing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973 and the formation of CITES in 1975 marked more mainstream gains.

• 7. Climate Comes First

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  Greta Thunberg, a Swedish schoolgirl, staged a protest in August 2018 outside the Swedish Riksdag, sparking widespread organizing of school strikes for the climate. The September 2019 climate strikes were likely the largest in world history. That year, a survey found climate breakdown viewed as the most important issue facing the world in seven of eight countries surveyed.

  Since the 2000s, the movement has increasingly focused on climate change as a top issue. Connections drawn between global warming and Hurricane Katrina, and Al Gore's 2006 documentary film An Inconvenient Truth, pushed the subject into the mainstream. In the United States in 2007, Step It Up 2007 became the largest grassroots environmental demonstration in years, with rallies in over 1,400 communities and all 50 states.

  The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, attended by 113 nations, marked a turning point in international environmental politics. It led to the United Nations Environment Programme and to a follow-up conference in 1992. Yet research in 2013 showed a precipitous decline in the United States public's interest across 19 different areas of environmental concern.

• 8. Strains And Critics

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  Evangelical environmentalism is a United States movement in which some Evangelicals emphasize biblical mandates for humanity's role as steward of Creation. It is best known for addressing climate action from a biblically grounded theological perspective, and it remains controversial among some non-Christian environmentalists. Free market environmentalism argues instead that the free market, property rights, and tort law are the best tools to preserve the environment.

  Labor environmentalism describes trade unions creating environmental policies and collaborating with environmental groups. To promote green jobs, unions developed the concept of a just transition, linking energy transition with equitable approaches to decarbonization. Some US organizations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense Fund, specialize in bringing lawsuits. More radical groups such as Earth First! and the Earth Liberation Front have been determined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to be a terrorism threat.

  When environmentalism became popular in the early 20th century, its focus on wilderness and wildlife reflected the interests of primarily white middle and upper class supporters. The Southwest Organizing Project's Letter to the Group of 10 argued the movement ignored harm to nearby communities, including less job growth. The NIMBY movement shifted locally unwanted land uses from middle-class neighborhoods to poor communities with large minority populations, a pattern supported by the United Church of Christ's study in 1987.

  Violence shadows the work. Every year, more than 100 environmental activists are murdered worldwide. In 2014, 116 were assassinated, and 185 in 2015. In 2022, Global Witness reported that more than 1,700 land and environmental defenders had been killed in the preceding decade, about one every two days, with Brazil, Colombia, the Philippines, and Mexico the deadliest countries.