Steinbeck and the Environment: Interdisciplinary Approaches

9. Revisiting the Sea of Cortez with a "Green" Perspective

NINE Revisiting the Sea of Cortez with a "Green" Perspective Clifford Eric Gladstein and Mimi Reisel Gladstein This essay places Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of Travel and Research in the context ofnineteenth- and twentieth-century "philosophical streams" ofAmerican environmental thought and compares Steinbeck's ecological reasoning to that of 1990s "ecowarriors." With one or two exceptions , Sea of Cortez proves to be a work ahead of its time, with a holistic view of nature approaching the Gaia hypothesis. Both prescient and prophetic , Sea of Cortez is especially notablefor its early recognition that the ocean's resources are finite and cannot withstand for long the pressures of wasteful and destructivefishing practices. Modern environmentalism was presaged by several philosophical streams whose headwaters can be traced in the conservationist, preservationist , and transcendentalist movements of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the one hand, thinkers such as John Wesley Powell and Gifford Pinchot viewed nature as a finite resource that had to be managed effectively to bring about more efficient development and to conserve it as a source for human profit.1 In a related but different evolution, preservationist and transcendentalist thinkers such as William Cullen Bryant, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau romanticized the natural environment, believing it to be a source of refuge, rejuvenation, and purification for the human spirit oppressed by a "world that is too much with us." John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club more than one hundred years ago, sought to conserve wilderness in its natural state, not necessarily for the use of humanity, but as a reserve from people's corrupting influence.2 These were the forebears who contributed to the course of much that is the contemporary environmental movement.3 Still, what we define as contemporary environmentalism has characteristics that distinguish it from what came before. The preserva- 162 Gladstein and Gladstein tionist, transcendentalist, and. conservationist movements were at least a century old before they merged, in the years following World War II, in the writings of Rachel Carson and the activism of David Brower to become the collection of ecological ideologies subsumed under the umbrella of today's environmentalism.4 The sages of the present movement integrated the ideas of their predecessors with new knowledge from the postwar world of plastics, pesticides, and profligate consumption into a more comprehensive ideology, recognizing not only the challenge of preserving natural resources, but also the threat created by industrial society's exploding use of unnatural substances. In doing so, contemporary environmentalism moved forward from its fountainhead philosophies. The ethic of Pinchot and Powell focused on the productive value that could be sustained from conserving natural resources, while the ideology that is the mainstream of the contemporary environmental movement stresses the interconnectedness of all thingsa Whereas Muir and his acolytes resolved to preserve patches of nature and set them apart to prevent abuse by people, contemporary ecology emphasizes that humans are a part of nature, not apart from it. Contemporary environmentalism differs from its roots in that it recognizes nature as a finite resource and seeks to address the complex natural relationships upon which humanity depends for survival . It moves beyond the notions of conservation for more efficient use or preservation in order to maintain intrinsic value. As environmental historian Samuel Hays explains: "The conservation movement was an effort on the part of leaders in science, technology, and government to bring about a more efficient development of physical resources. The environmental movement, on the other hand ... stressed the quality of the human experience and hence of the human environment" (13). Modern environmentalism is further distinguished from its predecessors, in the words of John McCormick, by "a broader conception of the place of man in the biosphere, a more sophisticated understanding of that relationship and a note of crisis that was greater ... than it had been in the earlier conservation movement" (48). Literary works often precede and foretell the articulation of philosophical concepts. And lovers of the natural world have been among the most devoted readers ofJohn Steinbeck. Maybe it is because they A "Green" Perspective 163 see in his works strong identification with and respect for tillers of the soil and harvesters of the sea as well as an abiding reverence for the earth in its pristine state. Maybe it is because Steinbeck's appreciation for nature and his concern regarding humanity's relationship with it is more complex than a simple awe...