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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* Social movement and American political institutions
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* 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)
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” The American Experience. Ed. Kate Kinsella. Boston, Massachusetts: Pearson Education, Inc., 2005. 388-390. Print.
John Muir: John Muir also known as "John of the Mountains", was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, environmental philosopher and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States and was the founder of the Sierra Club.
When thinking about the transcendental period and/or about individuals reaching out and submerging themselves in nature, Henry David Thoreau and his book, Walden, are the first things that come to mind. Unknown to many, there are plenty of people who have braved the environment and called it their home during the past twenty years, for example: Chris McCandless and Richard Proenneke. Before diving into who the “modern Thoreaus” are, one must venture back and explore the footprint created by Henry Thoreau.
Youth 30) and took great pleasure in the outdoors. In 1849, Muir and his family
The purpose of this paper is to inform you about John Muir and his effect on America's national forests. He was a Scottish American and was born in Dunbar, UK on April 21, 1838. He arrived in the U.S in 1868 when he was 30 years of age. John Muir was one of the most influential naturalists in the world. If it wasn't for John Muir we probably would not have the national park known as Yosemite. Some of his goals in the U.S. were the preservations of the national forests. He was an environmental philosopher and did well for the U.S. national parks. John Muir founded the Sierra Club, an American organization and the 211-mile trail called the Sierra Nevada was named in his honor.(John Muir, wikipedia)
The next day he set out on foot to walk from Louisville to Florida, a distance
The Conservation movement was a driving force at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was a time during which Americans were coming to terms with their wasteful ways, and learning to conserve what they quickly realized to be limited resources. In the article from the Ladies’ Home Journal, the author points out that in times past, Americans took advantage of what they thought of as inexhaustible resources. For example, "if they wanted lumber for their houses, rails for their fences, fuel for their stoves, they would cut down half a forest at a time; and whatever they could not use or sell they would leave to rot on the ground. They never bothered their heads to inquire where more wood was coming from when this was gone" (33). The twentieth century opened with a vision towards the future, towards preserving the land that had previously been taken for granted. The Conservation movement came along around the same time as one of the first major waves of the feminist movement. With the two struggles going on: one for the freedom of nature and the other for the freedom of women, it stands to follow that they coincided. As homemakers, activists, and citizens of the United States of America, women have had an important role in Conservation.
Since the rise of the American environmental romanticism the idea of preservation and conservation have been seen as competing ideologies. Literary scholars such as Thoreau and Muir have all spoke to the defense of our natural lands in a pristine, untouched form. These pro-preservation thinkers believed in the protecting of American lands to not only ensure that future generations will get to experiences these lands, but to protect the heavily rooted early American nationalism in our natural expanses. Muir was one of the most outspoken supports of the preservation ideology, yet his stylistic writing style and rhetoric resulted in conservation being an adopted practice in the early 20th century
John Muir helped the development of the American conservation movement during the late nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. The creation of the National Park Service, the creation of several major national parks, including Yosemite National Park and the creation of the Sierra Club were all because of John Muir. In the late nineteenth century America was in a stage of expansion and economic development that used as well as threatened much of the natural world. Much of the economic development was in the form of industrialization that took its toll of the environment with both its consumption of natural resources as well pollution. This expansion and economic development had adverse consequences on the environment of the United States. During this time of development many became aware of the damage being done to the natural world and attempted to prevent or limit this damage being done. It is during this time of both industrialization and spiritual awakening that the conservation movement arose with one of its most famous activists, John Muir.
President Theodore Roosevelt has a very strong opinion on conservation. He wanted the American people to know why conservation is a vital part of our lives. Roosevelt gets this message across by making connections between conservation and the progress, patriotism, and morality of the American people. He stresses the significance of conservation throughout his speech and important it is that we take action now. Theodore Roosevelt is a very potent speaker who feels very strongly about conserving our nation’s natural resources.
Birds, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew little about them. But John and Roosevelt liked the same bird the water-ouzels. "The only birds he noticed or cared for
When thinking about nature, Hans Christian Andersen wrote, “Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.” John Muir and William Wordsworth both expressed through their writings that nature brought them great joy and satisfaction, as it did Andersen. Each author’s text conveyed very similar messages and represented similar experiences but, the writing style and wording used were significantly different. Wordsworth and Muir express their positive and emotional relationships with nature using diction and imagery.
Leopold defends his position the advent of a new ethical development, one that deals with humans’ relations to the land and its necessity. This relationship is defined as the land ethic, this concept holds to a central component referred to as the ecological consciousness. The ecological consciousness is not a vague ideal, but one that is not recognized in modern society. It reflects a certainty of individual responsibility for the health and preservation of the land upon which we live, and all of its components. If the health of the land is upheld, its capacity of self-renewal and regeneration is maintained as well. To date, conservation has been our sole effort to understand and preserve this capacity. Leopold holds that if the mainstream embraces his ideals of a land ethic and an ecological consciousness, the beauty, stability and integrity of our world will be preserved.
“We are the same as plants, as trees, as other people, as the rain that falls. We consist of that which is around us; we are the same as everything. If we destroy something around us, we destroy ourselves” (Buddha). This quote from Buddha depicts the essence of Buddhism and its intimate relationship with the environment. Buddhism new and old is intertwined with nature and the environment. Buddhism is intrinsically, at its core, environmentalism. Environmentalism shines through many aspects of Buddhism: the middle way, Samsara, Karma, iconography, and impermanence. These facets led to Buddhism containing an underlying theme of environmentalism.