The burst of environmental activism that began in the late 1960s and sparked a series of landmark laws is likely to be recalled by future generations as a significant turning point in the history of the twentieth century. It was a revolution of sorts—a revolution that changed the physical world itself. More important, it changed, probably forever, the way people look at their world.
Change and a new consciousness
The physical changes in the United States are obvious. The water and air are cleaner, much cleaner than they would have been without the antipollution statutes. A halting start has been made in reducing the threats to human health inserted into the environment by industry and technology, and particularly the threats posed by the exploding production of synthetic chemicals after World War II. Progress has been slow and many problems remain unsolved. But our country, to some degree at least, is a cleaner and healthier place to live.
Over the long run, the most significant change caused by the environmental revolution is likely to be the attitude of citizens of this and other countries. Many of us now view the natural environment, as we did not previously, as linked to our own welfare and happiness. We regard the preservation of the air, land, and water and the conservation of resources as imperatives for our future. We demand that governments act to protect the environment, that polluters be curbed, and that those who degrade the environment be punished. The knowledge that human society is part of a seamless natural system is becoming part of our consciousness.
In any revolution there are excesses and inefficiencies and so it is with this one. Some of our decisions on how best to reach desired goals were hasty and rules and regulations were ill-considered. In some cases more money was spent than needed to protect ourselves and, in a relatively few instances, there were real economic dislocations of business and workers. On occasion, alarms sounded by ill-informed, inky journalists such as myself have been unwarranted or unnecessarily shrill, arousing excessive fears in the populace. Difficult issues raised by environmental regulation, like allocation of resources, have created political polarization where none existed before.
A legacy of accomplishment
But, on balance, the social benefits of the environmental revolution seem to me to outweigh the costs by many orders of magnitude. We waste far more of our national treasure on our toys, our vices, and on unproductive, life-threatening armaments than we do by making false steps in trying to renew a clean, healthy, aesthetically satisfying natural world.
With all the havoc and horror that residents of this century have brought into the world, the environmental impulse, expressed through the landmark statutes of the 1970s, is one legacy we can pass on to our posterity with some pride.
Philip Shabecoff covers environmental affairs for The New York Times.
A version of this article appeared in print in the June 1985 issue of Resources magazine.
