Excerpts from Losing Ground

The essential activism of environmentalism has thus differed significantly from other American social and political movements. It was not, like the labor, civil rights, or women's movements, a rebellion forged in oppression--although oppressed people did eventually come to see themselves as victims of environmental degradation. None of the Progressive founders or early adherents were enslaved, disadvantaged, dispossessed or discriminated against. Quite the contrary. They were landed hunters and fishermen inspired by apolitical naturalists to protect the sources of their aesthetic pleasure, their game preserves, and their vision of America as the promised land of their Anglo-Saxon forefathers. By mid 20th century, although conservation organizations were less exclusively enclaves of the very wealthy, their aims remained limited and conservative. (Page 3)

Few environmentalist of his era (Bob Marshall who died in 1939) understood the nexus between their movement and others in American society, and even fewer seemed willing to learn from the successes and failures of other movements. The civil rights movement, for example, presents some obvious object lessons. It was not national organizations or their Washington offices that ultimately brought civil rights to America's racial minorities. They were won by direct confrontation, sit-ins, and illegal demonstrations led by leaders like Medger Evers and Martin Luther King, Jr., who grew impatient with the intransigence of the federal government and saw clearly that civil rights and other contemporary movements were inextricably linked. (Page 252)

When King realized that his alleged allies in Washington could do the movement more harm than the segregationists--by trading away basic civil rights for short-term gains--he escalated direct actions at the local level, often in defiance of pleas for moderation from Washington allies. When he persisted with nonviolent confrontations they responded to his actions and rhetoric very much as today's mainstream environmental leaders respond to grassroots activists. Thurgood Marshall believed the only way to establish civil rights was through litigation and that King's protest marches were counterproductive. (Page 253)

Environmentalism needs to penetrate every institution, ideology and religious faith in our culture. It needs to be seen as a social as well as a political movement. That appears to be happening, perhaps because in our deepest consciousness we know that without it we will perish and that whatever other priorities we temporarily place before it will also perish (Page 263)