A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism

by Patrick Allitt

Overview

A provocative history of the environmental movement in America, showing how this rise to political and social prominence produced a culture of alarmism that has often distorted the facts

Few issues today excite more passion or alarm than the specter of climate change. In A Climate of Crisis, historian Patrick Allitt shows that our present climate of crisis is far from exceptional. Indeed, the environmental debates of the last half century are defined by exaggeration and fearmongering from all sides, often at the expense of the facts.

In a real sense, Allitt shows us, collective anxiety about widespread environmental danger began with the atomic bomb. As postwar suburbanization transformed the American landscape, more research and better tools for measurement began to reveal the consequences of economic success. A climate of anxiety became a climate of alarm, often at odds with reality. The sixties generation transformed environmentalism from a set of special interests into a mass movement. By the first Earth Day in 1970, journalists and politicians alike were urging major initiatives to remedy environmental harm. In fact, the work of the new Environmental Protection Agency and a series of clean air and water acts from a responsive Congress inaugurated a largely successful cleanup.

Political polarization around environmental questions after 1980 had consequences that we still feel today. Since then, the general polarization of American politics has mirrored that of environmental politics, as pro-environmentalists and their critics attribute to one another the worst possible motives. Environmentalists see their critics as greedy special interest groups that show no conscience as they plunder the earth while skeptics see their adversaries as enemies of economic growth whose plans stifle initiative under an avalanche of bureaucratic regulation.

There may be a germ of truth in both views, but more than a germ of falsehood too. America’s worst environmental problems have proven to be manageable; the regulations and cleanups of the last sixty years have often worked, and science and technology have continued to improve industrial efficiency. Our present situation is serious, argues Allitt, but it is far from hopeless. Sweeping and provocative, A Climate of Crisis challenges our basic assumptions about the environment, no matter where we fall along the spectrum—reminding us that the answers to our most pressing questions are sometimes found in understanding the past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143127017
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	03/31/2015
Series:	Penguin History of American Life Series
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Patrick Allitt is the Cahoon Family Professor of American History at Emory University, where he has taught since 1988. He was an undergraduate at Oxford and a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard Divinity School and Princeton University. The author of six books, he is also the presenter of eight lecture series with “The Great Courses,” including “The Art of Teaching.”

Table of Contents

Preface xiii

Introduction 1

1 The Schizophrenic Fifties 15

Nuclear Anxieties 17

Population and Food 21

The Natural World 26

Cities and Suburbs 34

2 Pollution and Pessimism 40

Pollution in the News 41

Five Pessimistic Intellectuals 49

The Counterculture 62

3 Politics and the Environment 67

Environmental Legislation 69

Population, Resource Exhaustion, and Economics Cleaning Up 89

4 Energy Politics 96

The First Oil Crisis and the Alaska Pipeline 97

Nuclear Power 102

We China Syndrome and Three Mile Island 108

Amory Lovins 114

5 Crises and Critics 122

Endangered Species 124

Love Canal 130

Environmental Racism 135

Ozone and Acid Rain 139

Cancer Controversies 145

Major Environmental Disasters 149

6 Anti- and Counterenvironmentalists 156

The Reagan Era 159

Counterenvironmentalist Ideas 165

Free-Market Environmentalism and "Wise Use" 181

7 Ecologists and Historians 189

Ecology 190

Patch Dynamics 193

The Origins of Environmental History 197

Second-Generation Environmental History 204

8 Deep and Radical Ecology 215

Deep Ecology 216

Bioregionalism 222

Monkeywrenching 225

Critics of Deep Ecology 233

9 Global Warming 239

The "Warmers" 242

The Global Warming Skeptics 254

10 Environmental Issues of the 1990S 265

The Soviet Legacy 267

Genetically Modified Foods 270

Endangered Species II 275

Ecotourism 284

Endocrine Disruptors 287

11 The New Millennium 298

The Antitobacco Campaign 300

Biofuels 305

Electric Shocks 310

Invasive Species 317

Global Warming, Continued 319

Conclusion 328

Notes 339

Image Credits 372

Index 373

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

The Wall Street Journal:
“In recounting partisan battles, Mr. Allitt’s objectivity is refreshing…His critique of the relentless crisis mentality will lead many environmentalists to dismiss the book as anti-environmental, while anti-environmentalists will object to his conclusion that much conservation has been achieved at little cost to ordinary Americans."

The Weekly Standard: 
“A book that deserves widespread readership and course adoption…The virtue of Allitt’s history is a fresh approach to familiar themes and controversies, and from a perspective only occasionally brought to bear on the subject…He gets the larger story right…Allitt’s wide-gauge historical approach is a valuable complement to the many scientific and policy critiques that have piled up over the years.”

Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City and Precious Commodity:
“In this sweeping study, Patrick Allitt covers every conceivable major character and event in the modern ‘age of environmentalism.’ The book is grounded in intellectual history, and seeks to find balance in interpreting the role of environmental advocates and naysayers, in successes and failures of governmental regulation, in objectives and outcomes. The tone is definitely optimistic about the long view of meeting environmental challenges in the United States. At the same time, in linking past to present, Allitt offers caution about what might unfold in the days to come. Above all else, he touts the value of history in assessing America’s complex environmental legacy.”

Adam Rome, author of The Genius of Earth Day:
“I don’t agree with everything in A Climate of Crisis, but Patrick Allitt’s well-written and provocative book has given me more to think about than any other history of the U.S. environmental movement. A Climate of Crisis is both bracing and exciting.”

Editorial Reviews

The Wall Street Journal:
“In recounting partisan battles, Mr. Allitt’s objectivity is refreshing…His critique of the relentless crisis mentality will lead many environmentalists to dismiss the book as anti-environmental, while anti-environmentalists will object to his conclusion that much conservation has been achieved at little cost to ordinary Americans."

The Weekly Standard: 
“A book that deserves widespread readership and course adoption…The virtue of Allitt’s history is a fresh approach to familiar themes and controversies, and from a perspective only occasionally brought to bear on the subject…He gets the larger story right…Allitt’s wide-gauge historical approach is a valuable complement to the many scientific and policy critiques that have piled up over the years.”

Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City and Precious Commodity:
“In this sweeping study, Patrick Allitt covers every conceivable major character and event in the modern ‘age of environmentalism.’ The book is grounded in intellectual history, and seeks to find balance in interpreting the role of environmental advocates and naysayers, in successes and failures of governmental regulation, in objectives and outcomes. The tone is definitely optimistic about the long view of meeting environmental challenges in the United States. At the same time, in linking past to present, Allitt offers caution about what might unfold in the days to come. Above all else, he touts the value of history in assessing America’s complex environmental legacy.”

Adam Rome, author of The Genius of Earth Day:
“I don’t agree with everything in A Climate of Crisis, but Patrick Allitt’s well-written and provocative book has given me more to think about than any other history of the U.S. environmental movement. A Climate of Crisis is both bracing and exciting.

From the Publisher

02/17/2014
Emory University historian Allitt (The Conservatives) examines contemporary American environmentalism historically, from his “counter-environmentalist” and pro-industrialist stance, in order to allay fears of a real crisis. He structures his work chronologically, devoting each chapter to the conflicting issues within each established time frame. His initial chapter on the 1950s describes “nuclear anxieties” and worries about overpopulation, eventually making his way through discussions of biofuels, invasive species, and alternative energy. While Allitt claims that “America’s environmental problems have been manageable problems,” it’s difficult to assess the extent to which his claim is based on wishful thinking or just a cherry-picking of the available evidence. He also implies that environmental advocates are motivated less by scientific evidence than careerism or a desire to constrain the economy. This is most striking in his dubious discussion of anthropogenic climate change, of which he remains a skeptic. Though “he study of history shows us how bad we are at predicting the future,” that has little bearing on the fact that 97% of climate research points to human activity as the culprit, regardless of potential future outcomes. Allitt doesn’t question his own technophilia, and his belief that capitalism and technology will solve our ecological problems should be received with its own dose of skepticism. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

2014-01-20
A wide-ranging history of the American environmental movement. Allitt (American History/Emory Univ.; The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History, 2009, etc.) offers a readable account that will provoke and displease many environmentalists. Few of the issues facing the nation—from overpopulation in the 1950s to air and water pollution in the '60s to genetically modified foods in the '90s to climate change today—warranted the accompanying moods of crisis, which were "usually disproportionate to the actual danger involved." Most problems were manageable, but they were exaggerated due to media sensationalism, environmental scientists seeking recognition, the needs of a growing environmental establishment and the beneficial effects of crises on environmental groups' memberships. "When the nation mobilized the political will it was effective in providing remedies," writes Allitt, celebrating actions on pesticides, toxic dumps, endangered species and other issues. However, he overlooks the fact that to mobilize political will, environmental groups had to fight for attention, waging information campaigns and sounding alarms, often in the face of strong, well-financed opposition, so that the public would eventually demand legislative action. Allitt's things-will-take-care-of-themselves view, based on sympathy with counterenvironmentalists' ideas, informs his book. He covers major individuals and controversies over six decades, showing how Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson created constituencies for mainstream environmentalism—a mass movement by 1970—and Edward Abbey inspired activists. Highly politicized issues pitted critics, who viewed green advocates as selfish elitists, against environmentalists who saw opponents as cynical and greedy. Allitt notes Congress passed 28 major environmental laws in the decade before 1980, when President Ronald Reagan began dismantling many regulations and sparked a conservative counterenvironmentalism. Allitt dismisses the "false" claims of impending catastrophe associated with climate change, which he deems "another real but manageable problem." An optimistic book that downplays the clamorous work of environmental groups and attributes progress to the institutions of democracy and capitalism.

Kirkus Reviews