notes on "Greening of a Nation?"

As mentioned below, this week I half-skimmed, half-read two books on the history of environmentalism in the US. The book that I mostly read from cover-to-cover is "The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the U.S. Since 1945." It dealt mostly with politics, federal agencies, and governmental policy but also gave overviews of trends, movements, and environmental thinking throughout the decades. (At times it was a little too general, bordering on repetitive, but for background info it should suffice.)

Points/quotes from the book that I think will be useful:

"As a nation we want convenience and abundance, but we want it without risk. Environmental protection was designed to mitigate that risk, to measure it and make it tolerable, to guarantee and minimum level of quality of life. That assurance comes with its own set of costs, which Americans tolerate in varying degrees, often depending on their economic situation and their perception of the future. When people perceive limits on their ability to succeed, particularly in material terms, they become more willing to accept greater risk to their health and society if that risk provides them with the money to purchase the amenities they crave. In effect, Americans have shown a tendency to be "green" when it is inexpensive — economically, socially, and culturally — but a reluctance to collectively sacrifice convenience and even the smallest of material advantages to assure a "cleaner" future." p5 (I feel that LivingHomes contributes to this "culture of convenience" by denying the owner nothing in terms of creature comforts in return for increased eco-friendliness; it even tries to play up the "sacrifices" in appearance - like the solar pipes on the roof - as an aesthetic plus.)

Some numbers: Beginning in 1850, 83% of growth occurred in suburbs; by 1970 more Americans lived in suburbs than in cities. Consequences of suburban growth: more use of land, drastic reduction of wilderness. People were also more interested in owning a home than in how architecturally unique/artistic it was (resulting in proliferation of cookie-cutter models). p10

Vocab lesson (FYI for me) - conservation is different from "environmentalism." Former is characterized by belief in compatibility of progress and preservation. Born out of leadership of Sierra Club and Wilderness Society, groups started by Progressives and consisting mostly of wealthy white men (at least at beginning). Interest in nature limited mostly to outdoor recreation and focused attention on "pristine" wild areas rather than problems of cities (where people lived). Concept of ecology wasn't really around at this time (early 1900s) p17

Interesting: "The comparison between wilderness as a 'mental' resource and coal, timber, and other natural physical resources was distinct. To sell the concept of wilderness in 1930s America required utilitarian packaging." p23 (you could say that the same is still true today, as not many people are prepared to embrace biocentrism, and the only way you can argue on behalf of respecting the biosphere is to frame it as a human life-support system)

Early arguments to preserve natural areas such as the protest to block development of a dam in Hetch-Hetchy Valley were based on "higher aesthetic values" and "intangible beauty" - thus the fight for nature was still based on its utilitarian value to human users. p37 (the dam was built anyway, which suggests that beauty does not trump resource use as one of humanity's more immediate needs. indeed leaders of Bureau of Reclamation at this point really did think providing resources was more important and they were serving the common good. p38 ) Also, preserving wildlands essentially made them into national parks which were of course for tourism and recreation - definitely utilitarian and human-centric.

Don't forget about the bigger political picture: Dams were a symbol of American might during the Cold War, which is another reason the conservationists kept losing. p38-39 (basically, international affairs can have a big influence on how much environmental policy gets implemented - can clearly be seen in contemporary enviro. issues taking a backseat since 9/11 - we "need" the oil from Alaska Wildlife Reserve to combat foreign threat)

p40 - in battles to save land from development, conservationists often made a compromise where, in order to gain protection for 1 bit of land, they promise not to try and halt development on other bits. Sets up problem of "sacred" and "profane" space - a short-sighted solution. (ex. was president of Wilderness society's Olaus Murie adopting policy of supporting dams outside of parks as a way to protect parks from dams)

Good quote about signs of hubris (about the Glen Canyon Dam) - "The dam itself overwhelmed the landscape; the pool of water behind it demonstrated the mastery that Americans believed they had achieved over nature. The existence of the dam magnified every trait of modern America..." p47

"The affluence of American society, its optimism and faith in the future, allowed both the passage of legislation such as the Wilderness Act, which reserved large areas of potentially economically valuable land, and the idealism characteristic of other Great Society programs. A nation in which standards of living rose every year could afford to set aside a part of its bounty for noneconomic, spiritual, and cultural reasons, and Americans did so with gusto." p55 (quote about the 50s) (another similar idea about 60s on p79)

The importance of choice, including consumer choice: "In the introduction to The Place No One Knew, Brower accepted partial responsibility for the drowning of Glen Canyon and argued that modernity, with its pace, abrogated the basic tenets of American democracy. 'Progress need not deny to the people their inalienable right to be informed and to choose,' he wrote. 'In Glen Canyon, the people never knew what the choices were.'" p77 (arguing that the real reason they were unable to save the land from a dam was b/c people weren't aware, so they couldn't have spoken out)

Sense of entitlement and personal rights is initially what drove gathering interest in the environment (quality of life issues) in the 60s. p85

Tech can do both good and bad: Atomic bomb is case in point. p90 "The image of progress required a tarnish that it never entirely lost..."

consumption and convenience becoming the norm in American life, made possible by technology: "By the 1960s Americans had become accustomed to American newer and better versions of every household necessity as a way of life; 'new and improved' was already a cliché of American life." p100

synthetic detergents problem in 1940s - supposed to be a great thing but caused environmental harm through foam that would not dissolve or biodegrade - "The challenge to synthetic detergents was a couched attack on the idea that things always could be made better without consequences. It also suggested that the consumption-oriented lifestyle of American society might have flaws." p100

"Despite calls from (Roderick F) Nash and others to give up the comforts of technological civilization for the simple life, Americans were not prepared to give up the amenities of their society and their opulent ways of life to assure a pristine environment. Instead, they wanted to have their figurative cake and eat it too; they wanted a clean environment and an ever-increasing standard of living." p104 (on p112, example of Jimmy Carter's efforts to get Americans to save E, but during this period of economic decline, polls showed enthusiasm for "quality of life" environmental issues declined)

funny but not related: "Energy conservation became so widely espoused that during the administration of President Jimmy Carter, the thermostats in federal buildings were turned down to sixty-eight degrees F to conserve energy during the winter. The cultural ramifications were even broader, in one instance changing the definition of "room temperature" in cookbooks from seventy-to degrees to sixty-eight degrees F. The impact on recipes remains unclear." p112

Under a section called "the limits of 1970s environmentalism": "The raw numbers of people interested in the topic were good for environmentalism but their interest was not always very deep. Conspicuous by their absence were minorities—African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans in particular—and people from rural areas. Conservationists and environmentalists historically had come from the classes of people who were economically secure. Environmentalism's message about deferring material gain in order to preserve the future held little appeal for the poor or others previously excluded from economic prosperity." p125 (same problem with many green residential homes: audience was limited to suburb or rural areas - rather than cities where lots of the poor lived - and to upper/middle classes that could afford custom or custom-prefab houses)

A roadblock to utopia: to protect the environment, not everyone is happy: "The cries of the new environmental coalition a few years before had not seemed threatening. But by the mid-1970s everyone in a range of industries felt that entire ways of living and earning a livelihood were on the line." p131

Good quote about the dystopian element of modernity: "When a mysterious disease killed a number of delegates at an American Legion meeting in Philadelphia in July 1976 and when a few years later highly toxic PCBs... were created by the combustion of other materials in a building fire in Buffalo, New York, it seemed that the very essence of the modern world had become potentially lethal. The technology that made possible the abundance that Americans enjoyed also had consequences that people feared. Hazardous and nuclear waste came to represent the downside of industrial prosperity." p136