Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
CONCLUSION: THE NEW ENVIRONMENTALISM
RODERICK NASH, WITH MARTHA DAVIDSON
What we have been engaged in, in this topic and in the program that
inspired it, is the creation of a new definition of environmentalism. In the
past, we have defined the term in various ways, and each definition has, in
turn, affected our relationship with nature. Late in the nineteenth century
and early in the twentieth, there was a vision of environmentalism as effi-
ciency. It was the era of big dams and of managed forests with straight lines
of trees. Environmentalism, in that sense, was really just a more efficient
form of exploiting natural resources. That concept was followed in mid-
century by pastoralism—environmentalism as a revival of the Jeffersonian
ideal of a society of gentleman farmers, though now transformed to subur-
bia. And that was superseded, in the 1960s and the 1970s, by environmen-
talism as primitivism: the back-to-the-wilderness and back-to-the-land
movements. By that definition, environmentalism was a call to turn our
backs on technology, to reclaim our human heritage as hunters and gather-
ers living in a more direct relationship with the natural world.
But in these essays, a new definition seems to be taking shape: environ-
mentalism as a paradigm change. Environmentalism is being linked with the
human capacity to imagine, to invent, to innovate, and to shape the future.
We are realizing, as we enter a new millennium, that we can have a huge
role in shaping a new culture, and that environmentalism should be an inte-
gral part of that culture.
The cusp of the millennium is a rare vantage point for looking both
backward and forward. Let us look a thousand years into the past and a
thousand years into the future. We know from the study of history and
archaeology what was happening in the first century of the last millennium,
around the year 1000.The Crusades were being launched to oust Muslims
from the Holy Land. In Africa, the kingdom of Ghana reached its apogee
