NATURE AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Lecture 2: Darwin and a History of Environmentalism

Lecturer: Chris Pearson

Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

The Darker Side of Darwinism

• Survival of the fittest in line with prevailing capitalist ethos

•Social Darwinism: ‘lower races’ had to give way to ‘higher civilised races’

•Humans needed to maintain their dominance over nature

The Lighter Side of Darwinism

• Humans part of nature• Darwin saw positive values in

nature• Nature held together by ‘mutual

love and sympathy’• Humans needed to co-exist

peacefully with nature• Two sides to Darwinism

The Environmental Movement

• Modern environmentalism dates back to the 1970s- realization that economic development caused profound environmental problems in many parts of the world

• But nothing new about the awareness of environmental problems

• Deforestation caused a wood-crisis from the eighteenth century, leading to forest protection.

Anthropocentric view of nature:

Managing the environment was a way of boosting human exploitation of resources for profit or for other human objectives

John Muir (1838-1914)

‘We are now in the mountains and they are in us…making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacles seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun, – a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal…’

John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (1874), entry for 6 June 1869

Yosemite National Park, California (Photo by Ansel Adams 1946)

‘The brushing aside of the Native American created a blank canvas onto which Euro-Americans projected their ideas of wilderness’

Peter Coates, Nature, 112

‘Monolith – The Face of Half Dome’, by Ansel Adams 1927

Snake River in the Tetons, by Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams taking a photograph

Rawnsley on the National Trust’s aims:

To ensure that places, such as the Lake District, remain ‘safe for the enjoyment of the people, unharmed by the enjoyment of the people, unharmed by the speculating builder and free from the restrictions which land preserved for sporting rights must necessarily involve.’

Working class support for the National Trust:

‘I am a working man and cannot afford more than 2s., but I once saw Derwentwater and can never forget it. I will do what I can to get my mates to help.’

• Alkali Act (1863): prevent landowners’ trees, hedges and crops being damaged by hydrochloric acid emissions from chemical works

• Sanitary Act (1866): local councils required to persecute owners of smoky factories

• Public Health Act (1875): black smoke to be prevented ‘as far as practicable’

Some anti-pollution legislation in nineteenth century Britain:

Report of the Smoke Abatement Exhibition held at Bingley Hall, Birmingham (1926)

Earth First Day, Philadelphia, 22 April 1970

Environmental issues in the 1970s

• The Club of Rome, Limits to Growth (1973) painted a grim picture of the future

• From 1960s, satellite photography revealed massive global deforestation. Led to demands to preserve forests

• Oil crisis of 1973 -search for alternative energy sources

• Late 1970s and 1980s: Awareness of global warning, threats to the ozone layer, and health problems caused by pollution

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful (1975)

James Lovelock, Gaia (1979)

The Earth as a self-sustaining unit, able to repair damage to itself.

Gaia’s ‘unconscious goal is a planet fit for life. If humans stand in the way of this, we shall be eliminated with as little pity as would be shown by the micro-brain of an intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile in full flight to its target.’

Lovelock, The Ages of Gaia, 1988

Protest against the Narmada Dam, India, 2008

The ‘light-green society’

Environmentalist ideas are widespread but shallow:

‘the result is a social order in which virtually every activity is touched by environmentalist concerns – but modestly, moderately, without upsetting the existing state of things too much.’

Michael Bess, Light-Green Society (2003)