At presstime, the largest oil spill in history is being battled in the Gulf of Mexico. My wife and I have fears about what St. Pete Beach will be like in September, when we make our annual pilgrimage. The public is angry, the oil company is spinning the facts with all its might, and the wildlife is suffering more than anyone else.
Thus, the environment is on my mind.
I try really hard to stay apolitical. Truth be told, I probably lean a bit right. But I am also supportive of movements that are decidedly leftist in nature.
An example of this is the environment.
Even as a child, I felt a strong desire to protect our ecology. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring didn't affect me like it did my elders, but the crying Indian certainly did.
Therefore, my parents never had to chide me for throwing trash out the window. Would I do that to that poor Indian?
While I was making my own personal dedication to being as nice as possible to our planet and ecology, a movement of concerned young adults was doing the same thing.
Out of this movement came a number of groups dedicated to righting the environmental wrongs that had long been inflicted by individuals and corporations more worried about making money than damaging the earth in the process.
One of the staunchest supporters of this way of thinking was Ladybird Johnson, who should, I hope, go down in history as our greatest First Lady. She ramrodded the Highway Beautification Act, and supported lots of environmental causes right up until her 2007 passing.
Of course, the young being the young, many preferred to take more controversial measures to protect their home. For example, Greenpeace, founded in 1971, has long gone outside the limits of the law in order to protest nuclear testing, toxic waste, and commercial whaling.
But environmentalism is not something that originated during the Boomer generation.
The Industrial Revolution was well underway in the late 19th century when Brits who were fed up with filthy conditions in cities caused by the many factories rose up and spoke out. Famous intellectuals threw their weight behind a Back-to-Nature movement which succeeded in getting laws passed by Parliament to cut down the pollutants being spewed out.
The election of Teddy Roosevelt was a major boon to the US ecology. He promptly set aside hundreds of thousands of acres of land for national parks and monuments which likely would have been otherwise exploited for commercial purposes. The USA might be a much drearier place without Roosevelt's efforts.
Prior to the 1950's, the movement was known as conservation. During that decade, Organizations like the Sierra Club made their presence more known. They created exhibits showing the grandeur of Yosemite, aided by the photographs of member Ansel Adams. They also rallied to stop the building of dams in Dinosaur National Monument.
Meanwhile, the effects of pollution were becoming more and more evident. As the 60's rolled on, big business and manufacturing expanded rapidly, to the overall detriment of the environment.
This did not go unnoticed. Rachel Carson's book spurred a call for the banning of DDT, which eventually took place in 1972. In 1970, the United States Environmental Protection Agency was formed to study the effects of pollution. That year, the Clean Air Act was also passed. Over in India about this time, the Chipko movement began, and frequently employed a tactic of hugging trees in order to prevent their being harvested.
In 1973, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss coined the term "deep ecology." This new way of thinking acknowledged that there had to be room in the environment for humans and their developments, but that a happy medium could be reached to keep the ecology healthy.
The Endangered Species Act was signed into law that same year. In 1975, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora), an international association, began putting a damper on the importing/exporting of items like tiger skins, elephant ivory, and rare animals themselves.
All of this has certainly had a positive overall effect on the environment. Sadly, that has not been the case in my own locale. When I was a child, you could safely drink water from any cold-water spring. Nowadays, most are polluted by E. coli. But hey, Tyson Foods has nothing to do with it, they can prove it, this despite the fact that hog and chicken production is at an all-time high in the area.
Sorry, all of this talk about movements caused me to step up on the soapbox for a second there. ;-)
Thus, one of the legacies of the Boomer generation is the increased awareness of the environment. The air of L.A. may be renowned for its smog, but rest assured, it's not nearly as bad as it once was. The Cuyahoga River, which caught fire in 1969, is now a good place to go fishing. Commercial whaling has been greatly curbed, and most cetacean species are making comebacks.
We can't be proud of everything we've done, but we can be proud of our environmental awareness.
Comments (6)
Unfortunately, no matter how hard we tried in the 60's and 70's big business won out and they still are.
Living in Florida I am so pissed off at BP Oil that I am seeing red every time I read or write an article about them.
Now, as I right this there is only a 20 day moratorium to stop off shore drilling and nothing has changed about off shore drilling as far as safety concerns for oil spills are concerned.
Personally, I have boycotted BP. I will not buy their gas again.
Yesterday was world wide boycott day against BP. BP's response was that the gas stations are individually owned. But until those stations quit buying BP oil. I will not buy gas from their stations.
This morning I wrote an article about how BP is trying to stop BP boycotts.
Go to BBAC if you want to see how I replied.
Boycott BP...
Sharon
~The Baby Boomer Queen~
Posted by Sharon/Baby Boomer Queen | June 13, 2010 9:58 AM
Posted on June 13, 2010 09:58
I haven't bought BP since I threw my credit card away. However, I haven't bought Exxon gas in many years. I'm still p*****d at how they raised gas prices to pay for the cleanup and fines.
Posted by Bald Guy | June 13, 2010 12:47 PM
Posted on June 13, 2010 12:47
As a college student,in 1970's, I marched in the first environmental demonstration held at Appalachian State University. We did it as a mock funeral procession down the main street of Boone. The hearse bore the remains of an internal combustion engine. We wound through campus to the grave site where we buried it behind the soccer field. At the grave, we also spoke out against the university steam plant which belched black coal smoke over campus. Before I graduated, the smokestack was retired and turned into a pylon painted with ASU insignia. The good ol' days-- when boomers made great active protesters.
Posted by NCeddie | June 13, 2010 1:26 PM
Posted on June 13, 2010 13:26
Well, as regular readers might know, I am no stranger to the soap box. And I got some mixed feelings about it all. I am very much in favor of living as clean and close to nature as possible. But I have to laugh when I hear government and business preach “green”, recycling, and other such hypocrisy.
All pollution could be ended to morrow if there was truly a desire for that by the elite and powerful. They are holding all the strings. It is not us who dumps all the packing onto market that ends up in garbage cans. They are the ones who chose a system that forces everyone to buy from massive powerful wholesalers whose centralized huge facilities package all things and distribute them by rail and truck to all USA points and broad.
Maine once had many many miles of nothing but farm land. Even in Portland, our biggest city, the old houses and barns can still be seen. They are still there as a silent witness. But those over us, do not want us to have localized access to food. For then we could be more certain of farming techniques and we would remain largely independent of other countries or other states for our sustenance and economy. But having us at the mercy of prices in other countries and no longer having any means to our own local production, we now must be at the mercy of what ever price and conditions they want to grow in. They could even cut our food off and get rid of us if they liked. Of course, that would never happen ;-)
Alternative energy has been thoroughly advanced in the 1970s thanks to the first gas crisis of 1973, with many more to follow. Alternatives are artificially suppressed and made expensive. As well, much is persecuted and prevented. They like having us boxed in with no escape. So let no one fool you into thinking that whatever we have, we have by accident. Not Accident. Deliberate contrived purposeful malice! That is what we have.
But let us not just throw rocks at Corporate American and its bought government. Who buys and drives those gas guzzling trucks and SUVs? Any answers? We are ever hungry for energy wasting devices. Most appliances are deliberately built to be inefficient and they try to sell us every sort of gizmo they can. And we go for it. We are a throw away generation, constantly seeking the latest and greatest, dumping the old model for a new one, even though the old works fine. It just doesn’t look as stylish and slick. Oh, the horrors! We love to fly as often as we can, but its only been that way for the last 30-40 years of the last 6010 years or so.
So I wonder about the green movement, now being used as an excuse to bleed us to death in taxes, as if it was all of our creation and big business and government were totally innocent. Government has been very busy ever increasing their massive military/industrial complex while destroying us all with toxins and pollutants and saying its all us.
How I would love to see us finally love our planet but as far as I am concerned, the oil spill if being allowed to go uncontrolled and no doubt for reasons we may never know, just as Katrina and New Orleans was allowed to remain without much help. The phoniness of the world is hard to tolerate, especially when I and others like me get the blame when we would gladly welcome alternative energies and a return to local farming and many other advances such as those.
I grow tired of the lies and excuses being given by those above for their playing with us and lying so to us. There is more than meets the eye. Let those who have ears listen!
Posted by Scott Irv | June 13, 2010 8:46 PM
Posted on June 13, 2010 20:46
I am not one to get into the debates of who did what, when or how. The Gulf situation is a mess for sure and it is sad to see all those animals suffer. I am not much of one to get outraged and make a stand. It may be irresponsible I guess, but I choose to be neutral on my thoughts. Growing up, to tell you the truth, I never really never thought about the invironmental issues of the day. I was just a dumb kid living day to day in a kids world. I remember the big SOAR campaign when I was in Scouts and participated in many highway clean ups. But that is about the extent of my involvment. Thank God we do have those fighting invironmental issues. I remember when the Potomac River and Cheseapeake Bay were getting polluted. Thanks to new laws, they are cleaned up again! The BP situation is unfortunate and do feel for the fisherman and tourism and wildlife that will suffer from all this. It is tragic!
Posted by Rivers End | June 15, 2010 10:53 PM
Posted on June 15, 2010 22:53
Because the BP disaster is in my backyard, this is very personal to me. I no longer can go to my own "Whitest Beach In The World" and enjoy all the Gulf has to offer. That said... there are powers that stop environmentally sound practices. Follow the money. Here's just one example of who's to blame. If you haven't already, watch the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car" and see just who's in bed with who.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
Posted by Patti | June 28, 2010 9:14 AM
Posted on June 28, 2010 09:14