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Nature's friends.

Article Excerpt
There is no single event that can be pointed to for which we can say: "Aha! That's when the environmental movement began." Environmentalism grew slowly from a developing awareness that human activity was degrading Nature. That's as far as the Western world is concerned. There is evidence that in non-Western cultures ideas about sustainable resource use, respect for the land and sea as providers, and consumption on an as-needed basis existed long ago among aboriginal peoples: just as they continue to exist today.

Thomas Malthus, as far back as the late 18th century, had an awareness of the dangers of growth. In the 1994 book, The Environmental History of Britain Since the Industrial Revolution (ISBN: 0582226260) B.W. Clapp says that scientific concerns about damage to the environment began to emerge in the 1860's.

In 1864, The Maine Woods by Henry David Thoreau was published. In the book, Mr. Thoreau called for the establishment of "national preserves" of old-growth forest.

Twenty years later, George Bird Grinnell, editor of Forest and Stream, invited readers to write in and sign a pledge against harming any bird. An amazing 40,000 responded and they became the first members of the Audubon Society for the Protection of Birds. Mr. Grinnell named the society after the American naturalist and bird artist John James Audubon (1785-1851).

Throughout his life, John Muir (1838-1914) was concerned with the protection of Nature both for the spiritual advancement of humans and, as he said so often, for Nature itself. In 1892, he contacted the editor of Century Magazine. He wrote: "Let us do something to make the mountains glad." His letter sparked interest that led to the foundation of the Sierra Club.

However, both these early--organizations tended to focus on preserving wilderness and wildlife for the enjoyment of the social elite. They still viewed Nature as somehow separate from the human existence; humans were not part of Nature, they were superior to it. Environmentalists then were less concerned with the broader issues of pollution and resource depletion that are central to today's environmental movement.

It was Eugene and Howard Odum who, in the early 1950s, started to connect the dots. Their book, Fundamentals of Ecology, was published in 1953. In it they described a new science, that of ecology, in which whole...

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