Unlikely Environmentalists

Unlikely Environmentalists PDF Author: Paul Charles Milazzo
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700622381
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
Environmental activism has most often been credited to grassroots protesters, but much early progress in environmental protection originated in the halls of Congress. As Paul Milazzo shows, a coterie of unlikely environmentalists placed water quality issues on the national agenda as early as the 1950s and continued to shape governmental policy through the early 1970s, both outpacing public concern and predating the environmental movement. Milazzo examines a two-decade crusade to clean up the nation's water supply led by development boosters, pork barrel politicians, and the Army Corps of Engineers, all of whom framed threats to the water supply as an economic rather than environmental problem and saw pollution as an inhibitor of regional growth. Showing how the legislative branch acted more assertively than the executive, the book weaves the history of the federal water pollution control program into a broader narrative of political and institutional development, covering all major clean water legislation as well as many other landmark environmental laws. Milazzo explains how the evolution of Congress's internal structure after World War II, with its standing committees and powerful chairmen, ultimately shaped the scope and substance of important legislative policies. He reveals how Representative John Blatnik of Minnesota, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors, shepherded the first permanent water pollution control legislation through Congress in 1956; how Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma embraced pollution control to deflect criticism of the public works budget; and how Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine used an unwanted pollution subcommittee chairmanship to create a more viable federal water quality program at a time when few Americans demanded one. By showing that a much more diverse set of people and interests shaped environmental politics than has generally been supposed, Milazzo deepens our understanding of how Congress took the lead in addressing environmental concerns, like water quality, that ultimately contributed to the expansion of government. His book demonstrates that the rise of the environmental regulatory state ranks as one of the most far-reaching transformations in American government in the modern era.

Unlikely Environmentalists

Unlikely Environmentalists PDF Author: Paul Charles Milazzo
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700622381
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Get Book

Book Description
Environmental activism has most often been credited to grassroots protesters, but much early progress in environmental protection originated in the halls of Congress. As Paul Milazzo shows, a coterie of unlikely environmentalists placed water quality issues on the national agenda as early as the 1950s and continued to shape governmental policy through the early 1970s, both outpacing public concern and predating the environmental movement. Milazzo examines a two-decade crusade to clean up the nation's water supply led by development boosters, pork barrel politicians, and the Army Corps of Engineers, all of whom framed threats to the water supply as an economic rather than environmental problem and saw pollution as an inhibitor of regional growth. Showing how the legislative branch acted more assertively than the executive, the book weaves the history of the federal water pollution control program into a broader narrative of political and institutional development, covering all major clean water legislation as well as many other landmark environmental laws. Milazzo explains how the evolution of Congress's internal structure after World War II, with its standing committees and powerful chairmen, ultimately shaped the scope and substance of important legislative policies. He reveals how Representative John Blatnik of Minnesota, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Rivers and Harbors, shepherded the first permanent water pollution control legislation through Congress in 1956; how Senator Robert Kerr of Oklahoma embraced pollution control to deflect criticism of the public works budget; and how Senator Edmund Muskie of Maine used an unwanted pollution subcommittee chairmanship to create a more viable federal water quality program at a time when few Americans demanded one. By showing that a much more diverse set of people and interests shaped environmental politics than has generally been supposed, Milazzo deepens our understanding of how Congress took the lead in addressing environmental concerns, like water quality, that ultimately contributed to the expansion of government. His book demonstrates that the rise of the environmental regulatory state ranks as one of the most far-reaching transformations in American government in the modern era.

Unlikely Environmentalists

Unlikely Environmentalists PDF Author: Paul Charles Milazzo
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book

Book Description
Environmental activism has most often been credited to grassroots protesters, but much early progress in environmental protection originated in the halls of Congress. As Paul Milazzo shows, a coterie of unlikely environmentalists placed water quality issues on the national agenda as early as the 1950s and continued to shape governmental policy through the early 1970s, both outpacing public concern and predating the environmental movement. Milazzo examines a two-decade crusade to clean up the nation's water supply led by development boosters, pork barrel politicians, and the Army Corps of Engin.

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays

Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays PDF Author: Paul Kingsnorth
Publisher: Graywolf Press
ISBN: 1555979726
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book

Book Description
A provocative and urgent essay collection that asks how we can live with hope in “an age of ecocide” Paul Kingsnorth was once an activist—an ardent environmentalist. He fought against rampant development and the depredations of a corporate world that seemed hell-bent on ignoring a looming climate crisis in its relentless pursuit of profit. But as the environmental movement began to focus on “sustainability” rather than the defense of wild places for their own sake and as global conditions worsened, he grew disenchanted with the movement that he once embraced. He gave up what he saw as the false hope that residents of the First World would ever make the kind of sacrifices that might avert the severe consequences of climate change. Full of grief and fury as well as passionate, lyrical evocations of nature and the wild, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist gathers the wave-making essays that have charted the change in Kingsnorth’s thinking. In them he articulates a new vision that he calls “dark ecology,” which stands firmly in opposition to the belief that technology can save us, and he argues for a renewed balance between the human and nonhuman worlds. This iconoclastic, fearless, and ultimately hopeful book, which includes the much-discussed “Uncivilization” manifesto, asks hard questions about how we’ve lived and how we should live.

Unlikely Ally

Unlikely Ally PDF Author: Marilyn Berlin Snell
Publisher: Heyday.ORIM
ISBN: 1597144614
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Get Book

Book Description
An environmental journalist reveals how some California military bases are leading the charge in the fight against climate change. In California, the US military has begun to redefine how our national security operations relate to the destabilizing effects of climate change. Several bases have taken on a largely unrecognized yet crucial role in renewable-energy innovation and in preserving cultural and natural treasures. These facilities are going beyond environmental stewardship to align national defense with energy security and the protection of endangered species. In Unlikely Ally, environmental journalist Marilyn Berlin Snell takes readers through these bases to examine what twenty-first-century sustainable-energy infrastructure looks like; whether combat readiness and species protection can successfully coexist; how cutting-edge technology and water-conservation practices could transform life in a resource-constrained world; and how the Department of Defense's scientific research into the metabolic secrets of the endangered desert tortoise could speed human travel to Mars.

The Psychology of Environmental Law

The Psychology of Environmental Law PDF Author: Arden Rowell
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 147983551X
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book

Book Description
Offers psychological insights into how people perceive, respond to, value, and make decisions about the environment Environmental law may seem a strange space to seek insights from psychology. Psychology, after all, seeks to illuminate the interior of the human mind, while environmental law is fundamentally concerned with the exterior surroundings—the environment—in which people live. Yet psychology is a crucial, undervalued factor in how laws shape people’s interactions with the environment. Psychology can offer environmental law a rich, empirically informed account of why, when, and how people act in ways that affect the environment—which can then be used to more effectively pursue specific policy goals. When environmental law fails to incorporate insights from psychology, it risks misunderstanding and mispredicting human behaviors that may injure or otherwise affect the environment, and misprescribing legal tools to shape or mitigate those behaviors. The Psychology of Environmental Law provides key insights regarding how psychology can inform, explain, and improve how environmental law operates. It offers concrete analyses of the theoretical and practical payoffs in pollution control, ecosystem management, and climate change law and policy when psychological insights are taken into account.

Unlikely Alliances

Unlikely Alliances PDF Author: Zoltán Grossman
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295741538
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

Get Book

Book Description
Often when Native nations assert their treaty rights and sovereignty, they are confronted with a backlash from their neighbors, who are fearful of losing control of the natural resources. Yet, when both groups are faced with an outside threat to their common environment—such as mines, dams, or an oil pipeline—these communities have unexpectedly joined together to protect the resources. Some regions of the United States with the most intense conflicts were transformed into areas with the deepest cooperation between tribes and local farmers, ranchers, and fishers to defend sacred land and water. Unlikely Alliances explores this evolution from conflict to cooperation through place-based case studies in the Pacific Northwest, Great Basin, Northern Plains, and Great Lakes regions during the 1970s through the 2010s. These case studies suggest that a deep love of place can begin to overcome even the bitterest divides.

The Green Years, 1964–1976

The Green Years, 1964–1976 PDF Author: Gregg Coodley
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700632344
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

Get Book

Book Description
In The Green Years, 1964–1976, Gregg Coodley and David Sarasohn offer the first comprehensive history of the period when the United States created the legislative, legal, and administrative structures for environmental protection that are still in place over fifty years later. Coodley and Sarasohn tell a dramatic story of cultural change, grassroots activism, and political leadership that led to the passage of a host of laws attacking pollution under President Johnson. At the same time, with Stewart Udall as secretary of the interior, the Wilderness Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and other land-protection measures were passed and the department shifted its focus from western resource development to broader national conservation issues. The magnitude of what was accomplished was without precedent, even under conservation-minded presidents like the two Roosevelts. The fast-paced story the authors tell is not only about the Democratic Party; in this era there was still a vital Republican conservation tradition. In the 1960s, Republicans were chronologically as close to Teddy Roosevelt as to Donald Trump. In both the House and Senate and in the Nixon and Ford administrations, Republicans played vital roles. It was President Nixon who established the Environmental Protection Agency and signed into law the 1970 Clean Air Act, revisions in 1972 to the Clean Water Act, and the 1973 Endangered Species Act. Under Nixon, actions were taken to protect the oceans, forests, coastal zones, and grasslands while regulating chemicals, pesticides, and garbage. The authors analyze the full range of transformations during the “Green Years,” from the creation of entirely new pollution-control industries to backpacking becoming mass recreation to how revelations about chemical exposure spurred the natural food movement. And not least, the tectonic shift in the political landscape of the United States with the western states becoming Republican bastions and centers of ongoing backlash against the federal government. The Green Years, 1964–1976 is the story of environmental progress in the midst of war and civil unrest, and of the lessons we can learn for our future.

Defending the Arctic Refuge

Defending the Arctic Refuge PDF Author: Finis Dunaway
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 146966111X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

Get Book

Book Description
Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the most contested landscapes in all of North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Considered sacred by Indigenous peoples in Alaska and Canada and treasured by environmentalists, the refuge provides life-sustaining habitat for caribou, polar bears, migratory birds, and other species. For decades, though, the fossil fuel industry and powerful politicians have sought to turn this unique ecosystem into an oil field. Defending the Arctic Refuge tells the improbable story of how the people fought back. At the center of the story is the unlikely figure of Lenny Kohm (1939–2014), a former jazz drummer and aspiring photographer who passionately committed himself to Arctic Refuge activism. With the aid of a trusty slide show, Kohm and representatives of the Gwich'in Nation traveled across the United States to mobilize grassroots opposition to oil drilling. From Indigenous villages north of the Arctic Circle to Capitol Hill and many places in between, this book shows how Kohm and Gwich'in leaders and environmental activists helped build a political movement that transformed the debate into a struggle for environmental justice. In its final weeks, the Trump administration fulfilled a long-sought dream of drilling proponents: leasing much of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain for fossil fuel development. Yet the fight to protect this place is certainly not over. Defending the Arctic Refuge traces the history of a movement that is alive today—and that will continue to galvanize diverse groups to safeguard this threatened land.

The Polluters

The Polluters PDF Author: Benjamin Ross
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199752973
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book

Book Description
The chemical pollution that irrevocably damages today's environment is, although many would like us to believe otherwise, the legacy of conscious choices made long ago. During the years before and just after World War II, discoveries like leaded gasoline and DDT came to market, creating new hazards even as the expansion and mechanization of industry exacerbated old ones. Dangers still felt today--smog, pesticides, lead, chromium, chlorinated solvents, asbestos, even global warming--were already recognized by chemists, engineers, doctors, and business managers of that era. A few courageous individuals spoke out without compromise, but still more ignored scientific truth in pursuit of money and prestige. The Polluters reveals at last the crucial decisions that allowed environmental issues to be trumped by political agendas. It spotlights the leaders of the chemical industry and describes how they applied their economic and political power to prevent the creation of an effective system of environmental regulation. Research was slanted, unwelcome discoveries were suppressed, and friendly experts were placed in positions of influence, as science was subverted to serve the interests of business. The story of The Polluters is one that needs to be told, an unflinching depiction of the onslaught of chemical pollution and the chemical industry's unwillingness to face up to its devastating effects.

Oil and Honey

Oil and Honey PDF Author: Bill McKibben
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458798585
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 195

Get Book

Book Description
Bestselling author and environmental activist Bill McKibben recounts the personal and global story of the fight to build and preserve a sustainable planet. Bill McKibben is not a person you'd expect to find hand - cuffed in the city jail in Washington, D.C. But that's where he spent three days in the summer of 2011, after leading the largest civil disobedience in thirty years to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. A few months later the protesters would see their efforts rewarded when President Obama agreed to put the project on hold. And yet McKibben realized that this small and temporary victory was at best a stepping - stone. With the Arctic melting, the Midwest in drought, and Hurricane Sandy scouring the Atlantic, the need for much deeper solutions was obvious. Some of those would come at the local level, and McKibben recounts a year he spends in the company of a beekeeper raising his hives as part of the growing trend toward local food. Other solutions would come from a much larger fight against the fossil - fuel industry as a whole. Oil and Honey is McKibben's account of these two necessary and mutually reinforcing sides of the global climate fight - from the absolute centre of the maelstrom and from the growing hive of small - scale local answers to the climate crisis. With characteristic empathy and passion, he reveals the imperative to work on both levels, telling the story of raising one year's honey crop and building a social movement that's still cresting.