* Managing Editor, Boston College Environmental Affairs Law Review, 2000–01. This Note is dedicated to David Chavous.
1 Robert Gottlieb, Reconstructing Environmentalism: Complex Movements, Diverse Roots, in Out of the Woods: Essays in Environmental History 145–47 (Char Miller & Hal Rothman eds., 1997).
2 See Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century 207 (1995).
3 See Edwards, Liberty and Environmental Justice, in Ecological Resistance Movements 35–52 (Bron Raymond Taylor ed., 1995).
4 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 8.
5 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 145.
6 See Jo Freeman, On the Origin of Social Movements, in Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties 19–20 (Jo Freeman & Victoria Johnson eds., 1999) [hereinafter Freeman, Origin of Social Movements].
7 See id.
8 See William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature, in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature 69 (William Cronon ed., 1996).
9 See Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement 19 (1993).
10 See id. at 20–21.
11 See id.
12 See Samuel Hays, From Conservation to Environment: Environmental Politics in the United States Since World War II, in Out of the Woods: Essays in Environmental 102–07 (Char Miller & Hal Rothman eds., 1997); Dowie, supra note 2, at 17.
13 See Hays, supra note 12, at 102.
14 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 24; Hays, supra note 12, at 102.
15 See Hays, supra note 12, at 102.
16 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 23.
17 See id. at 24. As President Roosevelt stated in his December 2, 1901 address to Congress: “The fundamental idea of forestry is the perpetuation of forests by use. Forest protection is not an end in itself; it is the means to increase and sustain the resources of our country and the industries which depend on them. The preservation of our forests is an imperative business necessity.” Id. at 23.
18 See id. at 24.
19 Id. at 23. The Reclamation Service was renamed the Bureau of Reclamation in 1923. See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 22.
20 See id. at 22.
21 See id. at 23.
22 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 23; Dowie, supra note 2, at 16.
23 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 23.
24 See id. at 24.
25 See id. at 21. Pinchot, who returned to the United States after studying forestry practices in Germany, became the leader of the conservationist movement. See id.
26 See id. at 24.
27 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 22–23.
28 See id. at 24. Indeed, preservation included such diverse approaches as: “nationalism ([n]ature as national treasure); commercialism (wilderness available for tourism and recreation); spiritualism (wilderness as regeneration in an urban and industrial age); ecology ([n]ature as biological richness and diversity); and a kind of elite aestheticism ([n]ature as beauty and experience, especially for those presumed to be most capable of appreciating it).” Id. at 26–27.
29 See Cronon, supra note 8, at 72.
30 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 24.
31 See Cronon, supra note 8, at 72–77. The preservationist view was also similar to the romanticized vision of Jean Jacques Rousseau who envisioned that the cure to the evils of industrial life was a return to nature. See id. at 76.
32 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 15.
33 See id.
34 See id.
35 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 327 n.15.
36 See id. at 23.
37 See id. at 29–30.
38 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 2.
39 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 30–31.
40 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 2.
41 See id. During this time, national parks often posted “whites only” signs. See id. Moreover, leaders of environmental organizations espoused racist views. For example, Madison Grant, founder of the Zoological Society and the Save the Redwoods League, condemned the hunting practices of the “inferior southern European races” and warned that “swarms of Polish Jews . . . and other worthless race types . . . with their dwarf stature, peculiar mentality and ruthless concentration on self interest [were] being grafted upon the stock of a nation.” Id.
42 See William A. Shutkin, The Land That Could Be: Environmentalism and Democracy in the Twenty-First Century 96 (2000).
43 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 23.
44 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring 4 (1962).
45 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 146.
46 See Hays, supra note 12, at 104. “Earlier one can find little in the way of broad popular support for the substantive objectives of conservation, little ‘movement’ organization, and scanty evidence of broadly shared conservation values.” Id.
47 See id. at 105.
48 See id. at 104.
49 See id. at 105.
50 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 23. In addition to Silent Spring, “Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb, a neo-Malthusian tract on human population, and Barry Commoner’s Closing Circle, which rephrased ecological verities like ‘everything is connected to everything else’ and ‘everything must go somewhere’—alarmed, angered, and aroused a broad new constituency of middle-class activists.” Id. at 23.
51 Dowie, supra note 2, at 21. It has been argued that this title actually belongs to Dr. Alice Hamilton. Born in 1869, Dr. Hamilton was a medical doctor whose professional career investigating and writing about industrial disease and occupational hazards spanned some five decades. See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 47–55. Dr. Hamilton joined Jane Addams and other social reformers at the Hull House settlement in Chicago, where she worked for “improved sewage systems, garbage collection, and clean water, and against typhoid, carbon monoxide pollution, tetraethyl lead, and horse manure on city streets (a troubling effluent of the time).” Dowie, supra note 2, at 21.
52 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 21.
53 See id. at 21. Carson’s research in pesticides arose in large part from a friend whose birds in her bird sanctuary died during a mosquito eradication plan utilizing DDT in Duxbury, Massachusetts. See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 83.
54 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 86. In Carson’s view, the rise of pesticides, as indicative in America, had entered an era in which industry, primarily interested in making money, dominated the American landscape and was rarely challenged. See id. at 344 n.12.
55 See id. at 81.
56 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 28.
57 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 97.
58 See id. at 97.
59 See id. at 100. “The underground press, which included at its height in 1969 as many as 500 papers reaching more than 4.5 million readers, was especially significant in establishing sources of alternative information—including information not being reported, or being reported differently, in the established press—and as a framework for new ideas and action.” Id. at 99. Many of these papers focused on personal liberation, which they termed a “green” activity and associated it with the counterculture. See id. at 99–100.
60 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 96.
61 See Hays, supra note 12, at 108.
62 See id.
63 See id. at 109.
64 See id. at 108.
65 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 96.
66 See Hays, supra note 12, at 111.
67 See id. at 110.
68 See id. at 112.
69 See id. at 113.
70 See id. at 112.
71 See Hays, supra note 12, at 112.
72 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 102–03.
73 See id. at 106.
74 See id. at 102.
75 See id. The events of People’s Park in 1969 are particularly instructive of how environmental concerns emerged in the 1960s. See id. at 102–03. People’s Park, originally a vacant lot owned by the University of California at Berkeley, was seized by “[h]undreds of young people [who] planted seeds, trees, and sod and constructed a swing set, tables, and benches.” Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 102. Governor Ronald Reagan sent in the National Guard to retake People’s Park, injuring hundreds of protesters and killing one former student with a teargas canister in the confrontations that followed. See id. at 102–03.
76 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 23.
77 See id.
78 See id. at 24–25.
79 Id. (quoting Dennis Hayes, Harvard Law Student, Earth Day Rally 1970 in Washington, DC, PR Watch, Second Quarter (1994)).
80 Id. at 23. Originally conceived of as a teach-in by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day 1970 expanded into its own event. See Dowie, supra note 2, at 25. Earth Day celebrations have been held every year since Earth Day 1970 on April 22nd. See id. at 26.
81 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 107.
82 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 24.
83 See id. at 27. According to Time magazine, Earth Day 1990 was “a commercial mugging.” Priscilla Painton, Greening from the Roots Up: The Fanfare Masks a Quiet Revolution (Earth Day 1990), Time, April 23, 1990, at 76.
84 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 24–25; Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 105.
85 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 107.
86 See id.
87 See id. at 106–08.
88 See Hays, supra note 12, at 117.
89 See id. at 118.
90 See id.
91 See id.
92 See id.
93 See Marc K. Landy et al., The Environmental Protection Agency: Asking the Wrong Questions from Nixon to Clinton 22 (1990).
94 See id. at 32–33.
95 See id. The agencies that were reorganized and consolidated include: the Federal Water Quality Administration and the Office of Research on Effects of Pesticides on Wildlife and Fish; the Department of the Interior; HEW’s Bureau of Water Hygiene, Bureau of Solid Waste Management, National Air Pollution Control Administration, Bureau of Radiological Health and the Office of Pesticides Research; the Pesticides Regulation Division from the Department of Agriculture; the Division of Radiation Standards from the Atomic Energy Commission; and the Interagency Federal Radiation Council. See id. at 33.
96 See Shutkin, supra note 42, at 99.
97 See id. at 99–101.
98 See Hays, supra note 12, at 117.
99 See Landy, supra note 93, at 36. The EPA brought many suits for violations of water quality, primarily because it was easier to sue under water quality legislation than under the pre-1970 air quality statute. See id. For example, the EPA sued entities as diverse as: the cities of Atlanta, Cleveland, and Detroit for illegal sewage discharges; U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers for polluting the Ohio River; ITT Rayonier for dumping pulp waste products into Puget Sound; the Reserve Mining Corporation for dumping taconite filings into Lake Superior; and Armco Steel for polluting the Houston Ship Channel. See id.
100 42 U.S.C. § 7401 (1970).
101 Pesticides are now regulated by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), 7 U.S.C. § 136 (1990).
102 16 U.S.C. § 1451 (1972).
103 See id. at 100.
104 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 66–67.
105 See id. at 68.
106 See Hays, supra note 12, at 119. “During the campaign, the Reagan entourage had refused often to meet with citizen environmental groups and in late November it made clear that it would not even accept the views of its own ‘transition team’ which was made up of former Republican administration environmentalists who were thought to be far too extreme.” See id.
107 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 6.
108 See id. at 68–69. These organizations include the: Environmental Defense Fund; Environmental Policy Center; Friends of the Earth; Isaac Walton League; National Audubon League; National Parks and Conservation Association; National Resources Defense Council; National Wildlife Foundation; Sierra Club; and the Wilderness Society. See id. at 69.
109 See id. at 70. “Toward the end of the decade most mainstream groups experienced additional surges in membership, which were stimulated by reports of ozone destruction, global warming, images of oil on the beaches of Alaska, and medical wastes on the beaches of New Jersey.” Id. at 70–71.
110 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 145.
111 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 70.
112 See id. at 5.
113 See id. at 69.
114 See id.
115 See id.
116 See Hays, supra note 12, at 120.
117 See id. at 119.
118 See id. at 120.
119 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 36.
120 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 140 (quoting John Cook, Environmental Careers Organization).
121 See id. at 206.
122 See id. at 135.
123 See id. at 136–137.
124 See id. at 135.
125 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 211.
126 See Cronon, supra note 8, at 81–90. Cronon views a central paradox in “wilderness” ideology in that “to the extent we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead.” See id. at 81 (emphasis in original).
127 Deep ecology groups primarily reflect the following philosophy:
(1) the inter-relatedness of all life (biotic community), (2) the essential equality of all organisms as part of an overall system of biotic relationships (biodemocracy), (3) the rejection of human-centered arguments (anti-anthropocentrism), (4) the conception of the ‘intrinsic value’ of nature (ecocentrism), and (5) the goal of humanity as a fundamental identification of nature (self-realization, reimmersion).
Jerry A. Stark, Postmodern Environmentalism: A Critique of Deep Ecology, in Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism 259, 261–62 (1995).
128 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 226–35.
129 See id. at 207.
130 See id. at 208.
131 See id. at 207.
132 See id. at 208–09.
133 See Luther Gerlach, The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and Its Opponents, in Waves of Protest, supra note 6, at 86–87.
134 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 211.
135 See id. at 208–09.
136 See id. at 210. Other notable splinter groups include: the Native Forest Council started by Sierra Club dissident Tim Hermack in Oregon; Restore: The North Woods, founded by former Wilderness Society employee Michael Kellett; the Sea Shepherd Society established by former Greenpeace skipper Paul Watson; and the Oregon Natural Resource Council, an authorized splinter of the Wilderness Society. See id. at 211. The founders of Earth First!, an extremely controversial group which practices eco-sabotage, including tree-spiking, and whose members have used racist xenophobia in written and spoken remarks, previously worked for the Wilderness Society. See id. at 210.
137 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 209.
138 See id.
139 See id. The SCLDF kept its name because the name “Sierra Club” brings with it valuable name recognition and fundraising power. See id.
140 See id.
141 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 213.
142 See id. at 212.
143 See id.
144 See id.
145 See id. at 213.
146 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 36.
147 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 219–20.
148 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 37–38.
149 See id. at 38.
150 See id.
151 See id. at 36.
152 See id. at 37.
153 See id. Studies that reviewed fifteen reports published since 1971 examining air pollution, solid waste, noise, hazardous waste, consumption of chemically contaminated fish, and the risk of rat bite, concluded that six of the nine reports cited race as the most important predictor while three of the other reports cited income. See id. at 52 n.2.
154 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 39.
155 See id. at 40.
156 See id. at 39.
157 See Andrew Young, An Easy Burden: The Civil Rights Movement and the Transformation of America 443 (1996). The Poor People’s Campaign, conceptualized and organized by Dr. King before his death, began on May 12, 1968, when people flooded Washington, D.C. to create “Resurrection City.” See id. at 479–81.
158 See id. at 443. The Memphis garbage workers’ strike protested the disrespectful treatment of garbage workers, and began after two African-American garbage collectors were accidentally crushed by their own garbage truck when they were forced to take shelter in the back of the truck during a rain storm because they were not allowed to take shelter in the cabs of their trucks. See id. at 449.
159 See Cronon, supra note 8, at 303.
160 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 40.
161 See Cronon, supra note 8, at 304.
162 See id. The full name of the 1987 United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice study is: Toxic Waste and Race in the United States: A National Report on the Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics of Communities with Hazardous Waste Sites. Id.
163 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 144.
164 See id.
165 See id. at 146.
166 See id.
167 See id. Born in 1869, Dr. Alice Hamilton was a medical doctor and professor of pathology at the Women’s Medical School of Northwestern University whose professional career investigating and writing about industrial disease and occupational hazards spanned some five decades and culminated in publishing the classic text, Industrial Poisons in the United States in 1920. See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 150–53.
168 See id. at 146.
169 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 22.
170 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 38–39.
171 See id. Love Canal was not an isolated incident; leukemia clusters in Woburn, Massachusetts and the Kepone poisoning of wells in Hopewell, Virginia both added national media coverage and increased national awareness of pollution issues. See Dowie, supra note 2, at 128.
172 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 38.
173 See id.
174 See id. at 45.
175 See id. at 38.
176 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 127–29.
177 See id. at 127–28.
178 See id. at 127.
179 See id.
180 See id. at 128.
181 See Gottlieb, supra note 9, at 187.
182 See id.
183 See id. at 186–87.
184 See id. at 189. CCHW is now called the “Center for Health, Environment, and Justice.”
185 See id.
186 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 128.
187 See id. at 205.
188 See Waves of Protest, supra note 6, at 1.
189 See id. at 3. This distinction is important because although the initial mobilization will eventually decline, the organizational and communication lines forged by that mobilization often perseveres. See id.
190 See id. at 1.
191 See id. at 3.
192 See Freeman, Origin of Social Movements, supra note 6, at 3.
193 See Riley Dunlap & Angela Mertig, The Evolution of the United States Environmental Movement from 1970 to 1990, 4 Soc’y & Nat. Resources 211–12.
194 See id.
195 See id.
196 See id.
197 See id.
198 See Gerlach, supra note 133, at 86–90.
199 See id.
200 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 205.
201 See Gerlach, supra note 133, at 86.
202 See id. at 96.
203 See id.
204 See id.
205 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 147.
206 See Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (2d ed. 1962) (discussing paradigm shifts prompted by changes in technology and researchers’ search to find the answers to anomolies in a dominant pattern that need to be explained and incorporated in scholarship).
207 See id. at 10.
208 See id. at 23.
209 See id. at 17.
210 See generally Roberta Garner & John Tenuto, Social Movement Theory and Research: An Annotated Bibliographical Guide 1–48 (1997) (discussing the rise of dominant paradigms in social movement theory).
211 See Enrique Larana, New Social Movements 1 (1994).
212 See generally Neil Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior (1963); William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society (1959).
213 See Melvin F. Hall, Poor People’s Social Movement Organizations: The Goal Is to Win 3 (1995).
214 See id. at 3–4.
215 See id. at 5.
216 See id. at 6.
217 See Garner & Tenuto, supra note 210, at 22.
218 See Frances Fox Piven & Richard A. Cloward, Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail 24 (1977). The Resource Mobilization model is predicated upon an external infusion of resources to enable groups to mobilize, but since collective action is both risky and expensive, sufficient resources are usually unavailable to poor and disadvantaged groups who lack time and money. The success rate for the mobilization of poor and disadvantaged groups depends on the amount, not the type, of resources available to those groups. See id. Additionally, “resources” come in many forms, including: information; social organizations; repeat protesters; the recruitment of friends; established lines of communication; help placing an issue on the public agenda; and whether the public is ready to accept the issue as legitimate. See id.
219 See Garner & Tenuto, supra note 210, at 23–24. “A major component of the environment is the political opportunity structure, which includes the form of political institutions in the society, the behavior of incumbent elites, the level of social control and repression of movements, and intended and unintended reductions in the level of social control exercised against movements.” Id. at 24.
220 See id. at 22.
221 See Piven & Cloward, supra note 218, at 24.
222 See id. This ignores the reality that poor people can protest successfully by refusing to conform to institutional roles (i.e., by striking or refusing to pay rent). See id.
223 See Hall, supra note 213, at 8–9.
224 See id.
225 See Dowie, supra note 2, at 53–59.
226 See id.
227 See id.
228 See Karl Marx, Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) in The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition 5 (Robert C. Tucker ed., 1978).
229 See id. at 4–5.
230 See Carolyn Merchant, The Theoretical Structure of Ecological Revolutions, in Out of the Woods, supra note 1, at 18–27.
231 See id. at 19.
232 See id.
233 See Shutkin, supra note 42, at 24.
234 See When Parties Fail: Emerging Alternative Organizations 13–21 (Kay Lawson & Peter Merkyl eds., 1988).
235 See id. at 13.
236 See id. at 18–21.
237 See id. at 31–37.
238 The other types of alternative organizations are supplementary, communitarian, and antiauthoritarian organizations. See id. at 18–30. However, because alternative organizations are often absorbed by parties, or have their issues co-opted, they generally exist merely to supplement traditional party organizations. See id.
239 See Garner & Tenuto, supra note 210, at 30–37.
240 See Larana, supra note 211, at 4.
241 See id.
242 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 147.
243 See Garner & Tenuto, supra note 210, at 34.
244 See id.
245 See id.
246 See Joel Handler, Postmodernism, Protest, and New Social Movements, 26 Law & Soc’y Rev. 719 (1992).
247 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 147.
248 See Garner & Tenuto, supra note 210, at 34.
249 See Handler, supra note 246, at 719.
250 See id. Unfortunately, a primary critique of NSM theory is that it lacks a larger strategy to implement this precise societal transformation it seeks. See id. Moreover, it has been argued that new social movements are incapable of using the language of the liberal and the socialist traditions because they lack an institutional design for a new society. See id. at 720.
251 See Gottlieb, supra note 1, at 147.
252 See Hays, supra note 12, at 108.
253 See id.
254 See id.
255 See id.
256 See Shutkin, supra note 42, at 124.
257 See id.
258 See e-mail interview with Jonathan Leavitt, Lawrence Grassroots Initiative (Nov. 9, 1999) [hereinafter Leavitt II] (on file with author).
259 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 45.
260 See Shutkin, supra note 42, at 110.
261 See Leavitt II, supra note 258.
262 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 47.
263 See Leavitt II, supra note 258.
264 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 44.
265 See id.
266 See Leavitt II, supra note 258.
267 See e-mail interview with Jonathan Leavitt, Lawrence Grassroots Initiative (Nov. 7, 1999) [hereinafter Leavitt I] (on file with author).
268 Id.
269 Id.
270 Id.
271 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 47. In addition to destroying two million dollars of mining equipment in the coal fields of Eastern Kentucky, one activist handcuffed herself to a governor’s chair for four hours. See id. “Activists have blockaded landfills, delivered large samples of toxic waste to state legislative bodies, and seized control of hearings turning them into community interrogations of officials. They have marched, boycotted, held Mother’s Day ‘die ins,’ mock funerals, and at times have ‘blown up’ public hearings by disrupting the proceedings so thoroughly that official decisions they considered harmful to their communities could not be made.” See id.
272 See id.
273 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 46.
274 See Social Movements and American Political Institutions 201–07 (Anne N. Costain & Andrew S. McFarland eds., 1998) [hereinafter Social Movements].
275 See Edwards, supra note 3, at 46.
276 See id.
277 See id.
278 See generally Piven & Cloward, supra note 218 (noting different types of resources available to the poor for mobilization).
279 See id. at 208.
280 See Social Movements, supra note 273, at 207–09.
281 See id.
282 See id. at 207–08.
283 See id.
284 See Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics 118–34. (1994).
285 See id. at 122.
286 See id.
287 See id.
288 See Social Movements, supra note 273, at 202–03.
289 See id. at 202.
290 See id. at 202–03.
291 See Tarrow, supra note 283, at 131.
292 See Social Movements, supra note 273, at 210.
293 See id. at 212.
294 See id.
295 See id. at 208.
296 See Cronon, supra note 8, at 69–80.
297 See id. at 72–77.
298 See Social Movements, supra note 273, at 208.
299 See id.
300 See id.
301 See Tarrow, supra note 283, at 85. Tarrow argues that to be successful, movements must utilize “political opportunity structures,” which are opportunities in the political environment which increase the chances for movement success, thus providing incentives for people to undertake collective action. See id. at 81. Generally arising from either disagreements among elites or shifts in the ruling alignment, political opportunity structures allow disadvantaged citizens to participate by lowering the costs of collective action, identifying potential allies, and illuminating the weaknesses of the elites. See id. at 18.
302 See Social Movements, supra note 273, at 205.
303 See id. at 213.