The conservation movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the environmental movement which came about after 1950 had symbolic and ideological relationships, but were quite different in their social roots and objectives. A clear point is that especially in the beginning, only the elite, wealthy class, had time left to think and enjoy nature and joined the environmental movement organizations. It was born out a movement of amateurs. The organizations of the environmental movement viewed natural resources such as water, land, and air, as recourses that would improve the quality of life (Sandbach, 1980). The conservation movement grew out of the idea of how to use water, forests, minerals and animals, fearing that they would soon be exhausted.
Only the rich and wealthy people had time left to think about preserving nature because they had money to spend and time left to do other things than trying to get food. Almost all the known environmentalists were from a high class and almost all of them studied at Yale or Harvard or in Germany or some other (in that time) expensive and wealthy educational institute (Fox, 1981). Therefore it is logical that the Environmental movement was bigoted. It is important to know that the environmental movement is bigoted because it gives us a better idea of understanding how the environmental movement took place. The Environmental movement was not only bigoted because the wealthy, high class, WASP people were taking part of it, but also because John Muir, the considered father of the environmental movement, a middleclass man in his own right, was bigoted as well.
John Muir was the considered father of the environmental movement. He dedicated his life to the protection...
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...ere organizations of a elite class, full of racism. Therefore they were bigoted. And when the organizations of the environmental movement were bigoted, the environmental movement itself was bigoted.
ACKNOWLEGMENTS:
-Writing Centre
REFERENCES CITED:
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Written by: Stephen Fox (1981)
* A fierce green fire: The American environmental movement
Written by: Philip Shabecoff (1934)
* Social movement and American political institutions
Edited by: Anne N. Constain and Andrew S. Mc Farland (1948)
* Let people judge: wise use and the private property rights movement
Edited by John Echeverria and Raymond Booth Eby (1995)
* Flyer: John Muir Exhabit
Sierra Club (unknown Writer) (2004)
* The "Underclass" debate : views from history
Written by: Michael b. Katz (1939)
nature. Two years, in the prime of his life, were spent living in a shack
It was his dream to preserve the environment, not only for his descendants but for future
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