![[logo] US EPA](http://www.epa.gov/epafiles/images/logo_epaseal.gif){kind=logo}
From Ecology To Environmentalism
The definition of wilderness as an immense natural storehouse, subject to human management, changed after the Second World War. Life on the battle front, as well as the home front, curbed the country's appetite for colossal federal projects. Moreover, the almost immediate demobilization of the armed forces in 1945 and 1946 resulted in an unprecedented national birthrate. Cheap home loans for veterans pushed suburban settlement far beyond the city skylines. As the middle class found itself living on the edges of open lands, political questions surfaced about the preservation of the landscape just over the back fence. The concept of ecology--which valued esthetics and biology over efficiency and commerce--began to penetrate the public mind.
The growth of the cities also made plain the evils of pollution. Media stories covered radioactive fallout and its effect on the food chain, dangerous impurities in urban water supplies, and the deterioration of city air. The subtle metaphor of a "web of life," in which all creatures depended upon one another for their mutual perpetuation, gained common currency. Hence, the powerful reaction to Rachel Carson's 1962 classic Silent Spring, a quietly shocking tale about the widespread pesticide poisoning of man and nature. Her book elicited a public outcry for direct government action to protect the wild; not for its future exploitation, but for its own innate value.
In the process of transforming ecology from dispassionate science to activist creed, Carson unwittingly launched the modern idea of environmentalism: a political movement which demanded the state not only preserve the Earth, but act to regulate and punish those who polluted it. Sensing the electoral advantage from such advocacy, Presidents Kennedy and Johnson added the environment to their speeches and legislative programs. In his 1964 and 1965 messages to Congress, Lyndon Johnson spoke forcefully about safeguarding wilderness and repairing damaged environments.
Richard Nixon showed as much eagerness as his predecessors to profit from the issue, and he invoked it during the bitter presidential election of 1968. As President, however, he acted with ambivalence, moving in two directions at once. On one hand, he raised eyebrows by appointing a National Pollution Control Council, a Commerce Department body comprised solely of corporate executives. He also vetoed the second Clean Water Act. At the same time, in 1969 and 1970, he approved and directed a succession of sweeping measures which vastly expanded the federal regulatory protections afforded the environment.