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5 / In for the Long Haul: Living in the World E nvironmentalism began with crisis and a sense of commitment. People rallied against DDT, oil spills, dying lakes, and vanishing wildlife; they recycled cans and newspapers; they stuªed insulations in every crack; they joined organizations; and they published newsletters . Despite their eªorts, aided by bell-bottomed jeans, sex, drugs, rock and roll, the movement of the sun into Aquarius, and the ritual burial of a few automobiles, human consciousness did not change, social values remained much the same, the industrial machine ground on, population grew, and wilderness shrank. Local disasters came with unhappy regularity , but the world’s ecosystems did not visibly collapse. The foot soldiers of environmental protest—the college students who came to the streets for peace and the environment and against the Vietnam War—grew older. They changed their clothes and cut their hair, swapped Rex’s bandana for a dog collar and took him to the vet, got jobs, got married, bought a house in the suburbs, and had two (the then environmentally correct number) of children. Fervor declined; commitment, however, remained. Environmentalism found a place in the political dialogue ,andenvironmentalorganizationsmovedfromthestreetstothelegislature and on to the anterooms of administrators, where they watched overappointmentsof assistantundersecretariesandreportedtotheirmembers on the iniquities of the current administration. Environmental ideas spreadandtookroot,astheReaganadministrationdiscoveredwhenittried torollbackenvironmentalprotection;soonevenanti-environmentalpoliticians declared their commitment to “sound” environmental policies. 124 By the mid-1980s, the movement seemed at an impasse. It had changed the society in some ways and secured a place in political and social debates on every level, from town councils to presidential campaigns, but even James Watt’s open and blunt opposition during his term as secretary of the interior in the early 1980s produced only a new wave of members for theSierraClub.Environmentalism,whichinthe1970sseemedontheverge of transforming the society, seemed in the 1980s only another interest group. Since, by the logic of its position, the movement had to change social values or watch nature die, many charged it had failed. Radicals accused established organizations of “selling out” and turned from politics to direct action. Others believed the movement had lost touch with its roots and failed to grasp the central cause of environmental degradation , which they variously identified as overpopulation, technology, the wrong use of technology, science, the wrong kind of science, or the social and economic structures that perpetuated (choose one or more of the following ) hierarchy, racism, patriarchy, poverty, and the postcolonial domination of the Third World by the First.1 Each faction saw a clear road ahead, but the movement as a whole did not,fortheenvironmentalcrisis—asituationthatwouldsoonresolveitself or be resolved—had become a slow-motion disaster, something we had to live with as we changed it. That had consequences for environmental politics, but also for basic beliefs, forcing a diªerent approach to questions of finding, exploring, and living out environmental principles. It was one thing to live your principles secure in the knowledge that they would soon triumph or society would soon collapse, another to do it with no assurance of victory and no hope of a quick resolution. In addition, even if industrial society collapsed in the future (with consequences as deadly as those predicted by the worst doomsayers), in the short run life was not particularly uncomfortable. To face this environmentalists needed not just principles but ways of living them over a lifetime, ways that would help them form emotionally significant and satisfying connections to nature while living in a hostile or indiªerent society. Environmentalism’s inheritance and even the first generation of activism oªered little guidance here. Conservation and nature preservation accepted society. They used the political and administrative machinIn for the Long Haul: Living in the World 125 ery of government—the one to make e‹cient use of resources, the other to protect areas of scenic beauty for recreation and refreshment—and saw nature as only a part of a life well lived. In exploring a new life in nature environmentalists had begun, and often ended, within the familiar framework of individual choice and individual action. Green consumerism looked for individuals to build a sustainable society by enlightened decisions and regarded citizenship in the biological community in terms of choice rather than necessity. Bioregionalism began with people choosing places and ecosystems, and rural and often agricultural lives left open the question of how all of us were to live and on what principles we were to build our lives. Neither path faced squarely...

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