A Fresh Perspective on the Roots of Environmentalism

In one sense this book is just what its title suggests, an environmental history of Wisconsin's Fox River Valley from just before the Civil War until just after World War II. As one might expect, it charts the impact of industrialization on the area and the subsequent emergence of Progressive-era conservation. In another, more important sense, however, this book is much more than a simple case study or local history. The author, Gregory Summers, uses the Fox River story to illustrate how the gradual emergence of consumerism shaped popular perceptions of the natural world. The growth of a consumption-oriented economy disguised society's dependence on nature. People depended upon the extraction and manipulation of natural resources more than ever, impacting the environment to a greater extent. The majority of the people, however, no longer recognized this; improvements in technology had removed the process from their daily lives. "In almost every case," Summers writes, "the relationship between a commodity's consumption and the raw materials from which it was produced was so obscured by complex systems of production and distribution as to be invisible" (p. 7). The less citizens viewed nature as a means of production, the more they came to value it as a "place of escape, recreation and beauty in an urban-industrial world" (p. 11). They valued the river's natural amenities for their ability to attract tourism and, in a broader sense, their positive impact on the community's quality of life. They no longer appreciated their continued utilitarian importance, their vital role in supplying the raw materials for the goods and services the people enjoyed. A conflict was inevitable.

Environmental historians have for years noted the importance of prosperity in the development of environmentalism. By digging deeper and exposing the role of consumption in America's changing attitudes, Summers helps explain the essential problem facing environmentalists: their movement is a product of—and still dependent upon—the very forces it opposes. In the end, Summers warns environmentalists not to be ambivalent, or even hostile, to the industrialized control of nature. Given the extent to which consumption has separated Americans from their dependence on the utilization of natural resources, they invite disaster by suggesting rather simplistically that man leave nature alone, completely protected from human influence. "In the nation's consumer society," Summers concludes, "the central challenge of environmental politics is to remind people that using nature is the ultimate source of all their comforts, from basic necessities to lavish amenities" (p. 202). Since to date opponents of environmentalism have been more successful in making this argument, they have largely been able to shape the debate. If environmentalists could to counter it and urge people to be more judicious in their relations with the natural world, they would not be open to charges of elitism or hypocrisy.

To frame the issue, Summers begins with a contentious 1948 meeting of Wisconsin's Committee on Water Pollution (CWP). Here defenders of the area's long-time employer, the paper industry, faced complaints from citizens who feared that the industry's pollution hurt tourism. The dilemma was clear—a case of competing values. Summers then ventures into a discussion of the creation of the CWP as a product of industry's embrace of the dominant ideology of wise-use conservation. Explaining in great detail the problems of fiber waste, chemical pollutants, and sewage, Summers paints the CWP and its leader, Adolph Kanneberg, in a sympathetic light as they tried to explain that the paper industry was vital and had already begun to address the problem in a patient and cooperative manner. As the CWP wrestled somewhat futilely for an adequate resolution, the hearings themselves represented the maturation of a consumer society.

Having framed the debate, Summers then proceeds in a chronological fashion, first noting the prominence of the Fox River in the lives of nearby nineteenth-century residents. People saw the natural world...