Environmental movement in the United States

The organized environmental movement is represented by a wide range of non-governmental organizations or NGOs that seek to address environmental issues in the United States. They operate on local, national, and international scales. Environmental NGOs vary widely in political views and in the ways they seek to influence the environmental policy of the United States and other governments.

The environmental movement today consists of both large national groups and also many smaller local groups with local concerns. Some resemble the old U.S. conservation movement - whose modern expression is The Nature Conservancy, Audubon Society and National Geographic Society - American organizations with a worldwide influence. Increasingly that movement is organized around addressing climate change in the United States alongside interrelated issues like climate justice and broader environmental justice issues.

The early , which began in the late 19th century, included fisheries and wildlife management, water, soil conservation and sustainable forestry. Today it includes sustainable yield of natural resources, preservation of wilderness areas and biodiversity.

Conservation movement

The modern Environmental movement, which began in the 1960s with concern about air and water pollution, became broader in scope to include all landscapes and human activities. See .

List of environmental issues

Environmental health movement dating at least to (the 1890s - 1920s) urban reforms including clean water supply, more efficient removal of raw sewage and reduction in crowded and unsanitary living conditions. Today Environmental health is more related to nutrition, preventive medicine, ageing well and other concerns specific to the human body's well-being.

Progressive Era

which started in the 1980s focused on Gaia theory, value of Earth and other interrelations between human sciences and human responsibilities. Its spinoff deep ecology was more spiritual but often claimed to be science.

Sustainability movement

is a movement that began in the U.S. in the 1980s and seeks an end to environmental racism. Often, low-income and minority communities are located close to highways, garbage dumps, and factories, where they are exposed to greater pollution and environmental health risk than the rest of the population. The Environmental Justice movement seeks to link "social" and "ecological" environmental concerns, while at the same time keeping environmentalists conscious of the dynamics in their own movement, i.e. racism, sexism, homophobia, classicism, and other malaises of the dominant culture.^[5]

Environmental justice

As public awareness and the environmental sciences have improved in recent years, environmental issues have broadened to include key concepts such as "sustainability" and also new emerging concerns such as ozone depletion, global warming, acid rain, land use and biogenetic pollution.

Environmental movements often interact or are linked with other social movements, e.g. for peace, human rights, and animal rights; and against nuclear weapons and/or nuclear power, endemic diseases, poverty, hunger, etc.

Some US colleges are now going green by signing the "President's Climate Commitment," a document that a college President can sign to enable said colleges to practice environmentalism by switching to solar power, etc.^[6]

Environmental rights[edit]

Many environmental lawsuits turn on the question of who has standing; are the legal issues limited to property owners, or does the general public have a right to intervene? Christopher D. Stone's 1972 essay, "Should trees have standing?" seriously addressed the question of whether natural objects themselves should have legal rights, including the right to participate in lawsuits. Stone suggested that there was nothing absurd in this view, and noted that many entities now regarded as having legal rights were, in the past, regarded as "things" that were regarded as legally rightless; for example, aliens, children and women. His essay is sometimes regarded as an example of the fallacy of hypostatization.

One of the earliest lawsuits to establish that citizens may sue for environmental and aesthetic harms was Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, decided in 1965 by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The case helped halt the construction of a power plant on Storm King Mountain in New York State. See also United States environmental law and David Sive, an attorney who was involved in the case.

Conservation biology is an important and rapidly developing field. One way to avoid the stigma of an "ism" was to evolve early anti-nuclear groups into the more scientific Green Parties, sprout new NGOs such as Greenpeace and Earth Action, and devoted groups to protecting global biodiversity and preventing global warming and climate change. But in the process, much of the emotional appeal, and many of the original aesthetic goals were lost. Nonetheless, these groups have well-defined ethical and political views, backed by science.^[52]

Clashes by police[edit]

In 2023, for the first time in the history of the United States, the police killed an environmental activist during a protest.^[68] The protesters were camping in Atlanta's South River Forest, a natural area that the City of Atlanta and Police planned to raze in order to erect a police training facility to be called "Cop City." Police attacked protesters on 18 January 2023. One protester, Tortuguita or, Manuel Esteban Páez Terán was killed and seven more were arrested.^[68]

History of the environmental movement in the United States

, a 2009 documentary feature film about the start of the environmental movement in the United States.

Earth Days

Environmentalism (Critique of George W. Bush's politics)

Environmental issues in the United States

Environmental racism

List of American non-fiction environmental writers

List of anti-nuclear protests in the United States

Metal roof

Sex ecology

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excerpt

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ISBN

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John Muir and his legacy: the American conservation movement

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Forcing the spring: the transformation of the American environmental movement

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Nash, Roderick (1982). . ISBN 978-0-300-02910-9.

Wilderness and the American Mind, Third Edition

Reiger, John F. American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation (2000)

Shabecoff, Philip (2003). . Island Press. ISBN 978-1-55963-437-3.

A Fierce Green Fire: The American Environmental Movement

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Dreamers & Defenders: American Conservationists

Tresner, Erin. 2009. "Factors Affecting States' Ranking on the 2007 Forbes List of America's Greenest States" (Applied Research Project, Texas State University. )

online

The Emerging Environmental Majority by Christina Larson

The Illusion of Preservation. Harvard Forestry

State of Denial

The Unlikely Environmentalists

- Leading online magazine about environmental sustainability

Worldchanging

Environment

Dictionary of the History of Ideas:

Essays on environmental teachings of major religions

The State of the Environmental Movement Thoreau Institute

- Jeremiah Hall

History of the environmental movement

- Documentary film directed and written by Mark Kitchell. Explores 50 years of environmental activism in the USA. Inspired by the book of the same name by Philip Shabecoff.