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Overview
Few issues today excite more passion or alarm than the specter of climate change. In A Climate of Crisis, historian Patrick Allitt shows that our present climate of crisis is far from exceptional. Indeed, the environmental debates of the last half century are defined by exaggeration and fearmongering from all sides, often at the expense of the facts.
In a real sense, Allitt shows us, collective anxiety about widespread environmental danger began with the atomic bomb. As postwar suburbanization transformed the American landscape, more research and better tools for measurement began to reveal the consequences of economic success. A climate of anxiety became a climate of alarm, often at odds with reality. The sixties generation transformed environmentalism from a set of special interests into a mass movement. By the first Earth Day in 1970, journalists and politicians alike were urging major initiatives to remedy environmental harm. In fact, the work of the new Environmental Protection Agency and a series of clean air and water acts from a responsive Congress inaugurated a largely successful cleanup.
Political polarization around environmental questions after 1980 had consequences that we still feel today. Since then, the general polarization of American politics has mirrored that of environmental politics, as pro-environmentalists and their critics attribute to one another the worst possible motives. Environmentalists see their critics as greedy special interest groups that show no conscience as they plunder the earth while skeptics see their adversaries as enemies of economic growth whose plans stifle initiative under an avalanche of bureaucratic regulation.
There may be a germ of truth in both views, but more than a germ of falsehood too. America’s worst environmental problems have proven to be manageable; the regulations and cleanups of the last sixty years have often worked, and science and technology have continued to improve industrial efficiency. Our present situation is serious, argues Allitt, but it is far from hopeless. Sweeping and provocative, A Climate of Crisis challenges our basic assumptions about the environment, no matter where we fall along the spectrum—reminding us that the answers to our most pressing questions are sometimes found in understanding the past.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780698151598 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Penguin Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 03/20/2014 |
Series: | Penguin History of American Life Series |
Sold by: | Penguin Group |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 336 |
File size: | 8 MB |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Preface xiii
Introduction 1
1 The Schizophrenic Fifties 15
Nuclear Anxieties 17
Population and Food 21
The Natural World 26
Cities and Suburbs 34
2 Pollution and Pessimism 40
Pollution in the News 41
Five Pessimistic Intellectuals 49
The Counterculture 62
3 Politics and the Environment 67
Environmental Legislation 69
Population, Resource Exhaustion, and Economics Cleaning Up 89
4 Energy Politics 96
The First Oil Crisis and the Alaska Pipeline 97
Nuclear Power 102
We China Syndrome and Three Mile Island 108
Amory Lovins 114
5 Crises and Critics 122
Endangered Species 124
Love Canal 130
Environmental Racism 135
Ozone and Acid Rain 139
Cancer Controversies 145
Major Environmental Disasters 149
6 Anti- and Counterenvironmentalists 156
The Reagan Era 159
Counterenvironmentalist Ideas 165
Free-Market Environmentalism and "Wise Use" 181
7 Ecologists and Historians 189
Ecology 190
Patch Dynamics 193
The Origins of Environmental History 197
Second-Generation Environmental History 204
8 Deep and Radical Ecology 215
Deep Ecology 216
Bioregionalism 222
Monkeywrenching 225
Critics of Deep Ecology 233
9 Global Warming 239
The "Warmers" 242
The Global Warming Skeptics 254
10 Environmental Issues of the 1990S 265
The Soviet Legacy 267
Genetically Modified Foods 270
Endangered Species II 275
Ecotourism 284
Endocrine Disruptors 287
11 The New Millennium 298
The Antitobacco Campaign 300
Biofuels 305
Electric Shocks 310
Invasive Species 317
Global Warming, Continued 319
Conclusion 328
Notes 339
Image Credits 372
Index 373
What People are Saying About This
The Wall Street Journal:
“In recounting partisan battles, Mr. Allitt’s objectivity is refreshing…His critique of the relentless crisis mentality will lead many environmentalists to dismiss the book as anti-environmental, while anti-environmentalists will object to his conclusion that much conservation has been achieved at little cost to ordinary Americans."
The Weekly Standard:
“A book that deserves widespread readership and course adoption…The virtue of Allitt’s history is a fresh approach to familiar themes and controversies, and from a perspective only occasionally brought to bear on the subject…He gets the larger story right…Allitt’s wide-gauge historical approach is a valuable complement to the many scientific and policy critiques that have piled up over the years.”
Martin V. Melosi, author of The Sanitary City and Precious Commodity:
“In this sweeping study, Patrick Allitt covers every conceivable major character and event in the modern ‘age of environmentalism.’ The book is grounded in intellectual history, and seeks to find balance in interpreting the role of environmental advocates and naysayers, in successes and failures of governmental regulation, in objectives and outcomes. The tone is definitely optimistic about the long view of meeting environmental challenges in the United States. At the same time, in linking past to present, Allitt offers caution about what might unfold in the days to come. Above all else, he touts the value of history in assessing America’s complex environmental legacy.”
Adam Rome, author of The Genius of Earth Day:
“I don’t agree with everything in A Climate of Crisis, but Patrick Allitt’s well-written and provocative book has given me more to think about than any other history of the U.S. environmental movement. A Climate of Crisis is both bracing and exciting.”