Environmentalism's Political Impact

• The environment became an important political issue due to publicity, increased awareness that the Earth's resources were finite and the desire to experience wilderness and parks

  1970's
• In 1969, 1% felt the environment was the greatest domestic problem but 25% did by 1971
• Membership of environmental organisations grew with middle-class liberals joining old organisations like the Sierra Club or new ones like The National Resource Defence Council
• The Monkey Wrench Gang


  1975 written by Edward Abbey, a story of protestors using sabotage in opposition to those who were damaging the environment
• The New York Times said Abbey's story made him 'an underground cult hero'
• Environmentalism was strengthened by the revelation that the Love Canal near Niagara Falls was full of industrial waste that caused disproportionate numbers of miscarriages and birth defects in the local population which was relocated en masse in 1978
• The political implications of environmentalism lay in the fact that:

  • The environmentalist lobby gained such strength that Politicians were encouraged to pass environmental legislation's
  • Industry and economic growth provided employment but could damage the environment