Whereas scholars have thoroughly deconstructed the myth that so-called mainstream environmentalism was born of the first Earth Day in April 1970, we have just begun to explore what happened in the decade following. This article provides a much needed intervention into the scholarship on environmental politics in the 1970s by examining the activities of Friends of the Earth (FOE) in its long first decade (1969–1984). Founded in 1969, FOE synthesized concerns with environmental degradation, human welfare, and democracy into an aggressive political agenda. By the mid-1980s, it had replaced its original critique of corporate capitalism and government intransigence with a pragmatic and reformist analysis that held the central form of political action to be a citizen s petitioning of the state. FOE's development during its long first decade demonstrates the deliberate and contentious choices by which mainstream environmentalism emerged as a coherent political practice. While these choices have often been taken as a natural or inevitable response to the Reagan administration s assault on environmental protections, FOE's history demonstrates that these choices were far from inevitable and came at a high cost for mainstream environmentalism's relationship with grassroots political participation.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Book
Tom Turner;
(2015)
David Brower: The Making of the Environmental Movement
(/isis/citation/CBB771868566/)
Book
Lowell E. Baier;
(2015)
Inside the Equal Access to Justice Act: Environmental Litigation and the Crippling Battle over America's Lands, Endangered Species, and Critical Habitats
(/isis/citation/CBB806492601/)
Article
Avenell, Simon;
(2013)
The Borderless Archipelago: Toward a Transnational History of Japanese Environmentalism
(/isis/citation/CBB001421398/)
Article
Bruce E. Stewart;
Christopher J. Manganiello;
(October 2018)
Watershed Democracy: Rural Environmentalism and the Battle Against the TVA in Western North Carolina, 1965–1972
(/isis/citation/CBB798720878/)
Book
Julia E. Ault;
(2021)
Saving Nature Under Socialism: Transnational Environmentalism in East Germany, 1968 – 1990
(/isis/citation/CBB630260557/)
Book
Doyle, Timothy;
(2013)
Environmental Movements around the World: Shades of Green in Politics and Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001213198/)
Book
Longhurst, James Lewis;
(2010)
Citizen Environmentalists
(/isis/citation/CBB001034513/)
Thesis
Thomson, Jennifer Christine;
(2013)
From Wilderness to the Toxic Environment: Health in American Environmental Politics, 1945-Present
(/isis/citation/CBB001567540/)
Article
Wiese, Andrew;
(2013)
“The Giddy Rise of the Environmentalists”: Corporate Real Estate Development and Environmental Politics in San Diego, California, 1968--73
(/isis/citation/CBB001213632/)
Book
Jundt, Thomas;
(2014)
Greening the Red, White, and Blue: The Bomb, Big Business, and Consumer Resistance in Postwar America
(/isis/citation/CBB001422360/)
Book
Stephen Milder;
(2017)
Greening Democracy: The Anti-Nuclear Movement and Political Environmentalism in West Germany and Beyond, 1968-1983
(/isis/citation/CBB696749082/)
Book
Andrew S. Tompkins;
(2016)
Better Active than Radioactive!: Anti-Nuclear Protest in 1970s France and West Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB037500265/)
Book
McGurty, Eileen;
(2007)
Transforming Environmentalism: Warren County, PCBs, and the Origins of Environmental Justice
(/isis/citation/CBB000850764/)
Book
Colin M. Coates;
(2016)
Canadian Countercultures and the Environment
(/isis/citation/CBB113807958/)
Thesis
Bevington, Douglas;
(2007)
The Rebirth of Environmentalism: Grassroots Activism and the New ConservationMovement, 1989--2004
(/isis/citation/CBB001561545/)
Article
Sánchez-Vázquez, Luis;
Menéndez-Navarro, Alfredo;
(2015)
Nuclear Energy in the Public Sphere: Anti-Nuclear Movements vs. Industrial Lobbies in Spain (1962--1979)
(/isis/citation/CBB001550694/)
Article
Turner, James Morton;
(2009)
“The Specter of Environmentalism”: Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right
(/isis/citation/CBB001030367/)
Book
Eric T. Freyfogle;
(2017)
A Good That Transcends: How US Culture Undermines Environmental Reform
(/isis/citation/CBB554745324/)
Article
Bryan, William D.;
(2011)
Poverty, Industry, and Environmental Quality: Weighing Paths to Economic Development at the Dawn of the Environmental Era
(/isis/citation/CBB001034461/)
Article
Jonathan Toms;
(2020)
MIND, Anti-Psychiatry, and the Case of the Mental Hygiene Movement’s ‘Discursive Transformation’
(/isis/citation/CBB475527847/)
Be the first to comment!