Reworking the Environmental Movement

Reworking the Environmental Movement

The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, aimed to protest the corporate and governmental abuse of the environment. In its success, an aftermath of environmental awareness ensued rooted in the movements’ ethic of ecological education and scientific questioning of the human impact on nature. Environmentalism, an off-shoot of scientific hypotheses and ethics, created an impetus for federal legislation. In the subsequent years, Congress passed many highly successful acts committed to the protection of natural resources and human health. The objectives of environmental activists were being realized with increasing enthusiasm in the democratic system.

In the 1980s during the Reagan revolution, congressional spending was forced against the proverbial firing squad. Arguments surfaced that too much public money was being spent on the environment and that the federal government should play a much reduced role in federal regulation. The conservative voice criticized the governmental restrictions on private property with the intent of environmental protection. It was seen as a breach of the Fifth Amendment that prohibits the taking of property “without just compensation” called federal “takings.” Since then, the debate has sprung an environmental policy backlash consisting of the “property rights movement,” which contends the above argument, and its sister movement, “wise-use,” that supports the privatization of natural resources.

Reagan’s deregulation and laxity of environmental standards fueled the fire of the movement’s intensity in which national groups became larger and more politically driven. However, in the face of the backlash, environmentalism was caught between its ethic to protect and its struggle to be heard as an influential political voice. Thus, the movement has suffered great polarization, divided internally into camps that still exist today. One of the most dangerous aspects of the environmental movement’s political situation is its misuse of science to predict almost apocalyptic scenarios to promote their agenda.

This paper intends to provide a criticism of environmental policies based on three criteria: the internal decay of environmental organizations, its undiminished reliance on broad governmental regulation, and the dangerous politicization of science to meet narrow group interests.

Even the most philanthropic organizations, such as environmental groups, are plagued with heterogeneous agendas. Internal to the environmental groups’ seemingly monolithic facade are many divisions that corrupt the groups’ progress. The movement’s best known division is between the national and local groups. The national groups cover many environmental issues and are most closely tied with the federal government.