Always Learning
Environmentalism

Environmentalism

2nd Edition

David Peterson del Mar

Jul 2011, Paperback, 208 pages
ISBN13: 9781408255582
ISBN10: 1408255588
For orders to USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand or Japan visit your local Pearson website
£17.99
Buy Environmentalism

 
This title is also available in the following alternative formats:
CourseSmart eTextbook £10.99
  • Print pagePrint page
  • Email this pageEmail page
  • Write a reviewWrite a review
  • Share

Why are our environmental problems still growing despite a huge increase in global conservation efforts? Peterson del Mar untangles this paradox by showing how prosperity is essential to environmentalism. Industrialization drove people to look for meaning in nature even as they consumed its products more relentlessly. Hence England led the way in both manufacturing and preserving its countryside, and the United States created a matchless set of national parks as it became the world's pre-eminent economic and military power.

Environmental movements have produced some impressive results, including cleaner air and the preservation of selected species and places. But agendas that challenged western prosperity and comfort seldom made much progress, and many radical environmentalists have been unabashed utopianists. Environmentalism considers a wide range of conservation and preservation movements and less organized forms of nature loving (from seaside vacations to ecotourism) to argue that these activities have commonly distracted us from the hard work of creating a sustainable and sensible relationship with the environment.

Chronology

Who’s Who

Glossary

Maps

Contributions to global warming

Protected areas on land

Illustrations

J.M.W. Turner Slave Ship painting

Pet cemetery at Asnières

Autobahn

Earth from outer space

Greenpeace anti-whaling action

SUV ad

Saltwater aquarium

Painting of wind turbines

PART ONE ANALYSIS AND ASSESSMENT

1 Introduction

2 Domesticating the wild

Background

The birth of conservation

Nostalgia and nature loving

The birth of nature tourism

Pets

Environmentalism in the colonies and early U.S.

3 Industrial nature loving

The spread of conservation and preservation

Nature and nation

Wild nature

Domesticating the wild

4 The friendly wild of post-war affluence

Background

American suburbs

The friendly wild

Meaning and ecology

5 The counter-culture’s nature

Prosperity and alienation

Wild = good

Nature loving goes mainstream

Farley Mowat and the world we have lost

Mother nature’s sons: Jacques Cousteau and John Denver

6 Epiphanies

Silent Spring

Green surge

Western Europe

The rest of the West

Green nationalism

7 Radical departures

Background

Deep Ecology

Bioregionalism and ecofeminism

Friends of the Earth

Greenpeace and Earth First!

8 Thwarted

Background

Western-European Greens

Central and Eastern Europe

Backlash and accomodation

Success stories

Divisions

9 Extreme nature loving

Wilderness and technology

Wild playgrounds

Consuming nature

Aquariums and dogs

Freeing Keiko and finding Nemo

10 Assessment

PART TWO DOCUMENTS

1 Beowulf

2 William Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey

3 The Cruelty to Animals Act of 1835

4 George Perkins Marsh, Man and Nature

5 Anna Sewell, Black Beauty

6 William Morris, News from Nowhere

7 Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys

8 John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierras

9 J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

10 Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

11 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

12 Farley Mowat, Never Cry Wolf

13 Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

14 John Denver, Rocky Mountain High

15 Richard Adams, Watership Down

16 Donella H. Meadows, et al., The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind

17 Arne Naess, “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movements”

18 Endangered Species Act of 1973

19 Where You At? A Bioregional Quiz

20 Earth First Action in Oregon, 1985

21 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, 1992

22 Petra Kelly, “Creating an Ecological Economy”

23 Kyoto Protocol, 1997

24 Bjǿ[no accent]rn Lomborg, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World

25 Animal Wellness Magazine, “10 Steps to Animal Communication”

26 Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and what We Can Do About It

27 Rural Manifesto of the Countryside Alliance, 2009

28 Report of the League Against Cruel Sports, 2010

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

REFERENCES

INDEX

  • Documents section provides important primary source material, including images
  • Useful Glossary, Chronology and Who's Who sections for students new to the topic
  • Extensive Bibliography and Further Reading sections

David Peterson del Mar has taught environmental history in Canada and the United States and has published four books on social history, including the award winning What Trouble I Have Seen: A History of Violence against Wives (1996).

Your opinions count

Be the first to review this product. Write your review now.