The Environmental Movement: Where Are We Now?

Written by Kara Bowman, Educator

“Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil,
Then you can breathe,
Long as you don’t inhale.”
From Pollution by Tom Lehrer

When I was a girl in the 1960’s, I remember taking the trash outside, dumping it in the big can, and wondering where it went. One lucky day, I got to accompany my father to the county dump. I remember being flabbergasted at the scale and the smell, but especially by the concept. I clearly remember thinking, “This is it? This the great plan the grown-ups have for all of the trash we make? They dump it in the ground and cover it up?” Even at age six, I sensed that this was not a good, or sustainable, idea.

The environmental movement burst into the national consciousness in the 1962 with the publication of "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson. "Silent Spring" galvanized public opinion in the same way Uncle Tom’s Cabin had done a century before with slavery. "Silent Spring" spent 31 weeks on the best-seller list, and the public had a collective shift in understanding our interdependent relationship with nature. Prior to this time, the environmental movement was focused on preserving individual habitats from development, such as our National Parks, and solving specific problems, such as oil spills. It wasn’t thought that humans could impact the environment on such a large scale that our very lifestyle could poison us and make our communities, and the earth itself, uninhabitable. Before "Silent Spring", we were operating under the western expansion beliefs that nature was so vast it could heal itself and that there would always be more.

The idea of limitless resources ran smack into reality in the early 1960’s when people began naming what they saw around them and demanding action. In the eleven years following the publication of "Silent Spring", Congress passed the Wilderness Act, the Clean Air Act, the Water Pollution Control Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and established the Environmental Protection Agency. As Dr. Suess so eloquently put it in his 1971 book The Lorax, “"I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.” In the 1970’s, we were all speaking for the trees.

We’ve now had a couple of generations come of age since the birth of the modern environmental movement. With Generation X (born about 1964-1979) and Generation Y (born about 1980-2000) growing up in an era of heightened environmental awareness and higher stakes, we take it on faith that the younger generation is even more motivated than their elders to clean up the legacy we have left them. This turns out not to be true, however.

Environmental Defense released poll findings comparing environmental attitudes of young adults (18-25 year-olds), with those of the Baby Boom generation who came of age around the first Earth Day in 1970 (45-55 year-olds). "We undertook this effort expecting to find significant differences between the generations," said Fred Krupp, Executive Director of Environmental Defense. "And while those exist, we were struck more by the similarities. Baby Boomers and the Internet Generation (a subset of Gen Y) share the same concerns about the environment and agree that individual actions can make the difference when it comes to protecting the planet." (San Diego Earth Times)

Awareness of environmental problems is one thing, but taking action is another. As Marshall McLuhan exclaimed, “There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.” When we look at acting, rather than awareness, the difference between the generations grows. People who came of age when the environmental movement was bursting into our collective consciousness are more likely to take personal responsibility for being part of the solution. Analysis of a longitudinal study found that, except for a slight uptick in the early 1990’s, there has been a three-decade long decline in the number of youth 1) taking personal responsibility for the environment, 2) participating in conservation behaviors, and 3) agreeing with the concept that resources are scarce. “Findings reveal that youth tend to assign responsibility for the environment to the government and consumers rather than accepting personal responsibility.” (Environment and Behavior, Examining Trends in Adolescent Environmental Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors Across Three Decades, May 5, 2009) So it turns out that the latest generation is no more environmentally aware than Baby Boomers, and is less likely to take personal action on environmental issues. As a recent article put it, “Young people, in the popular imagination, are more environmentally conscious than the rest of us. But a new analysis of 30 years worth of data suggests that if we're waiting for a child to lead us out of the wilderness of environmental degradation, we may be waiting a long time.” (Tom Jacobs, Generation ‘Green’ Environmentally Oblivious, Miller-McCune, May 25, 2009)

How can we help motivate the younger generation? How can we share the reality of the situation without imparting a sense of hopelessness that can be paralyzing? We can help them follow the path of E.B. White who said, “I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.” We can help our children become respectful of nature by encouraging a personal relationship with nature from an early age. Rather than starting with the boring and tedious solutions, such as composting, we can begin by instilling a sense of awe and wonder about what we are trying to save. Spend time outdoors camping, fishing, hiking, and picnicking. Plant a garden. Identify birds. Collect rocks. Paint the landscape. Do whatever catches their interest and generates enthusiasm for nature.

We can also help our children learn about the interconnections in nature, which will help them think as environmentalists. As John Muir put it, “When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.” Read to them about environmental issues in order to educate them about the problems we face. Talk to them about your thoughts. I think it’s best not to be heavy-handed but to find where their heart lies and encourage whichever piece of environmentalism speaks to them. In my mind, the goal is not so much to create all of the specific behaviors you would like to see (such as awareness of wasting electricity or recycling), but to help grow a passion for thinking environmentally.

If you can plant the seeds, you can eventually stand back and watch them sprout and grow. I had this experience when my four year old son went on a field trip with his preschool class to a lumberyard. The manager was proudly showing the class around when he recklessly asked the group of tots whether there were any questions. “Yes,” answered my son. “Why are you trying to kill us?” After much sputtering on the part of the manager, my son explained, “Trees make air we breathe and you are cutting down trees, so you are killing us.” While his execution left a little to be desired in terms of finesse, his logic was ironclad and I was very proud that day of the little environmentalist I was growing.

Museum Tour offers many ways to encourage the budding environmentalist in your family. Celebrate their love of living nature with the Butterfly Pavillion, an AntWorks, Planet Frog, or the Carnivorous Creations terrarium. Go outside into nature with your younger child with Science on a Nature Walk. Or delve into exploring problems and solutions with your older child with the Global Warming Kit. Museum Tour has products for environmentalists of every age and interest.