Uncertain Hazards Chapter 3: New Ideas About Nature

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Uncertain Hazards Chapter 3 New Ideas About
Nature

• Charmayne Staloff
• Spring 2008

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Review Uncertain Hazards so far

• Claims made by citizens about illnesses within
  their communities being caused by industry impact
  on the environment are often unsubstantiated by
  scientific research
• Environmental Risk Assessment is not an effective
  tool for use in small communities, and will
  rarely support claims made by grassroots groups

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Why does it seem so sensible to most people
that exposure to toxins is unhealthy when
scientific data doesnt back it up?
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Teshs answer the rise of the environmental
movement
1962
Today
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Ideas characteristic of pre-environmentalism

• Nature not in need of protection
• Pollution was an acceptable part of
  industrialization
• Development projects such as damming and razing
  farmland to make room for subdivisions hailed as
  progress
• Garbage could simply be thrown away
• People did not correlate health problems with
  environmental degradation
• Newspapers and companies didnt have
  environmental sections or staff

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Sources of pre-environmentalist ideas

• Descartes mechanization of nature
• Religion Genesis
• Greek civilization
• Utilitarianism
• Specific technologies
• the phonetic alphabet (Abram)
• agriculture

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Early trends toward environmentalism

• Naturalists, such as Darwin
• ECOLOGY -- term coined by Haeckel in 1866
• nature is more like a living organism than a
  machine.
• Those that considered nature sacred
• John Muir and Henry David Thoreau

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In everyday discourse the environment was not
a conceptual category with any meaning.

• This began to shift in the 1960s
• Combination of ecological principles ethical
  principles POLITICAL principle
  environmentalism
• These 3 principles provided the moral basis for
  a new social movement.

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Main contributors to the beginning of
environmentalism

• Rachel Carson - Silent Spring, 1962
• Barry Commoner - Science and Survival, 1963
• Aldo Leopold - A Sand County Almanac, 1966
• Murray Bookchin - Our Synthetic Environment, 1962
• René Dubos - Man Adapting, 1965

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Silent Spring

• It was a book about what we do.
• Carson started from ecology, but talked not only
  about what was true or false, but also
  right and wrong
• Urged political action

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A Sand County Almanac

• Leopolds approach grounded in ethics
• Implied radical social action
• The land ethic
• Emphasized intrinsic value (vs. instrumental)

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Murray Bookchin

• Environmental destruction as the result of
  industrial capitalism
• Industrialization as destroying the natural web
  of plants, animals, soils

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Man Adapting

• Dubos ejected reductionism
• Emphasized interplay among all living things
• Warned that we must be wary of the possible
  negative impacts of technology

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The Closing Circle Commoners Four Laws of
Ecology

• Everything is connected to everything else.
• Everything must go somewhere.
• Nature knows best.
• Anything extracted from nature must be
  replaced.

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Promoters of the environmentalist message

• University faculty
• The media
• Legislators
• Bureaucrats and consultants in planning,
  development, agriculture, energy
• Charities
• Clergy

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Social activists supporting environmentalism in
the 60s

• Old conservationist organizations (such as the
  Sierra Club, National Audobon Society, etc.)
• Environmental Defense Fund
• Protesters of atomic testing
• Supporters of Zero Population Growth
• Fishermen and farmers
• Citizen groups trying to restrict DDT use

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Social critics adopting environmentalist discourse

• Civil rights activists
• Antiwar activists
• Feminists
• Counterculturalists
• Socialists and Marxists

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From progress to problems new perceptions of
development

• Occurrence of events such as the damming of
  the Colorado, the Cuyahoga River fire, and others
  have no intrinsic social or political meaning
  this meaning is imposed on them by the new lens
  of environmentalist thought.

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Splits in environmentalism
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Ecocentrism / Deep Ecology

• Inspired by Thoreau, Muir, Leopold
• Blames the environmental crisis on the publics
  refusal to recognize humans essential oneness
  with nature.
• NAESS deep ecology
• self-realization
• ecological self
• Devall and Sessions
• personal transformation and ecological
  consciousness

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Anthropocentrism / Social Ecology

• lay primary blame for the environmental crisis
  on the political economy.
• BOOKCHIN major figure
• Social oppression forces people to destroy their
  environment along with traditional lifeways
• Blames industrial capitalism
• Barry Commoner development of technology should
  be a social responsibility

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Grassroots A new aspect of environmentalism

• Not concerned with more traditional
  environmentalist concerns
• Locally situated
• 1980s beginning of environmental justice
• Fairness to humans environmentalism

LOIS GIBBS
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Critiques of Environmentalism

• From ecologists
• - Botkin Barbour Sagoff
• if there is no pattern, how could there be
  interference?

From humanities/social sciences - Nature as
social construction - William Cronon
NEITHER group opposes environmentalism nor
do grassroots groups
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Setting aside differences within
environmentalism, the real question is

• How many ordinary citizens have adopted
  environmentalist principles?

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some statistics

• gt 66 of general population said the government
  isnt spending enough on environmental issues
• 62 said theres not enough government regulation
  
• 74 say improvements must be made regardless of
  cost
• 64 chose environmental protection over economic
  growth
• In 1995, 63 of people polled self-identified as
  environmentalists

1990 polls
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Which environmentalist principles do most people
accept?

• The environment is endangered ?
• We have to change to save it ?
• People shouldnt interfere with natural balance
  ?
• Nature has intrinsic value ?
• Two surveysindicate that the answeris yes to
  the latter two statements.

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Lester Milbrath Survey1980 and 1982

• 7 groups of people polled (labor leaders,
  appointed officials, elected officials, business
  leaders, environmentalists, media gatekeepers,
  the general public
• Startlingly high agreement levels in response
  to questions about the need to live in harmony
  with nature, anthropogenic effects, cherishing
  nature
• implies an embrace of environmentalism

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Kempton, Boster, Hartley Survey 1989-1991

• Polled 5 groups Earth First! members (radical),
  Sierra Club members (moderate), the lay public,
  managers of dry cleaners, and laid-off sawmill
  workers
• Strong consensus across this wide spectrum on a
  core set of environmental values
• Phrases came from writings by Carson, Leopold,
  and others

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Other indications of success

• greening of Protestant thought (eco-theology)
• Environmental education in public schools
  environmental studies in universities
• Environmental laws that punish polluters show a
  moral shift
• Growth of ecotourism
• Environmentalism in POP CULTURE

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Environmentalism since the early 1960s

• Has combined science and ethics with POLITICS
• Has become a fairly coherent worldview that is
  well integrated into American core values.

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However

• These surveys, which show a trend toward
  environmentalism, dont reveal anything about WHO
  or WHAT people think needs to change
• Governments?
• Industries?
• Individuals?
• Regardless, its clear that most Americans have
  strong pro-environmentalist sentiments.

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We see the effects of environmentalist thought on
a variety of institutions

• but what about SCIENCE?

• Religion
• Education
• Government
• Tourism
• Pop culture

Environmentalisms most radical influence on
science would be to make illegitimate the
reductionism on which scientific investigations
depend.