Let’s start out by firmly stating this history does not “pin the definitional tail” on what is meant by “environmentalism” (“E”). That is a task better left to others. In this history “environmentalism” is at times a “movement”, a set of values, beliefs and priorities in a jurisdictional political culture, an economic development strategy, as a significant value priority of post-WWII generational cohorts/Big Sort, and a key factor in the definition and priority afforded to economic development’s traditional ultimate goal—economic and population growth. Environmentalism, it must be added, fundamentally altered many a jurisdictional policy system.
To add to the justifiable confusion, “environmentalism” comes in many forms and has intruded into economic development through ED’s Venn diagram of related policy areas such as energy and transportation, has heavily influenced our three drivers, in particular the jurisdictional economic base through consumer demand, government regulation, and formation of new sectors and industries. Population migration has also been affected by environmentalism through density development, zoning and various codes. The reaction to environmentalism has entered into the three competitive hierarchies and their flip side: business climate.
Old ED/CD strategies have been “tweaked” to include an environmental dimension, and new strategies, programs and tools have been devised in response to it. For example, pollution control, a form of environmentalism, has prompted a “brownfields” ED strategy, and prescribed state and federal environmental reviews that have massively affected “shovel-ready” siting, eminent domain, and traditional development/redevelopment ED strategies.
Just how much environmentalism has altered state and local economic development is probably lost on most contemporary economic developers. Environmentalism has been around for a half-century, and the great “intrusions” into economic development are well over twenty-five years in the past. Today people throw around expressions such as “smart growth”, sustainability, climate-control, SEQR/NEPA, density development, energy efficiency—and a host of others—without realizing that the author was forty years old before he heard of any of them. Between 1960 and 1990, most of the great battles and ruffled feathers occurred. As I write entire states (West Virginia) are battle grounds, occupations and jobs, clusters, industries, sectors are classified as “good or bad” by many simply by their relevance to environmentalism as defined by its movements, beliefs, and future forecasts. The intensity of commitment to “environmentalism” has been liken by some commentators (including Big Sort’s Bishop) to a secular religion.
Why and Impact of Environmentalism
It is hard to ignore or downplay the effect of environmentalism, however, defined, in our economic development history. What prompted this rise of postwar environmentalism? Part of the answer might be suggested by the disparity in incomes of those who tend toward environmentalism and those that support greater economic growth. The other part of the answer is that American (global) industry has ventured into new production processes and products since the Second World War and consumer demand encourages cheaper products that enhance lifestyle.
The chemical revolution in agriculture, the proliferation of synthetic materials, the development of atomic energy, the increased scale of power-generation and resource-extraction technology—all created new environmental hazards (Rome 5).
It is no secret the more one makes, the more environmental one is—or can be. This distinction has played out on the global scene as well as in domestic American politics. The simplistic, perhaps, conclusion is that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is involved. The more one can satisfy basic needs, security and jobs for example, the more one can move on to larger self-actualizing and altruistic forms of self-fulfillment. Wealth in other words paves the way to the rise of environmentalism. Hindsight over the last half-century does suggest some level of support for this position. Recessions are not the best time to seek solutions for global warming. Emerging nations postpone for several decades before they implement international agreements.
The unprecedented affluence of the postwar years encouraged millions of Americans to put a premium on environmental elements of ‘quality of life’ (Rome 5).
Nowhere was this premium more evident than in the American West. That region may well have been the mainspring of the early environmental movement—for two reasons. First, from western scholars came many of the earliest cogent critiques that led to the development not only of a “western literature”, but a new disciple of environmental history (Donald Worster (Worster) stands out as an environmental pioneer)[i]. The environment was an integral, core and defining aspect of what the West was. The environment was a core element of the Western identity—and western history.
Second, the sheer natural wonder that was the American West was under serious and substantial pressure from war year’s population and industrial expansion, and postwar jurisdictional policy systems prevalent in most non-Pacific western cities that pursued pure economic and population growth, seemingly oblivious to the harm caused to the natural environment. Post 1965 incremental movement of new generational cohorts into the West in short order provided leadership and constituency for early forms of environmentalism such as growth management—and even anti-annexation/urban renewal, and pro-neighborhood quality of life.
Evolution of Environmentalism; Waves or Forms
Environmentalism as understood in 2017 resulted from the cumulative and incremental evolution through several waves/forms and events starting in the Fifties and continuing to the present. Environmental scholars acknowledge the different forms, waves, or movements that dominated each decade since the 1960’s. Samuel Hay’s (Hays) presents a three stage chronology from the early 1950’s to the middle 1970’s. The earliest, mid-1950’s to early 1960’s were outdoor recreation, open space and wilderness preservation. The second stage was dominated by pollution and pollution control (air and water) which lasted until the early 1970’s when the third stage, focused on energy (nuclear to energy conservation) and endangered species.
The 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill (and Exxon Valdez and Alaska Pipeline 1989) exerted a huge impact on California/Alaska politics, planning, and economic development. Allitt asserts that Ralph Nader’s 1974 “Critical Mass 74”, the first nationwide anti-nuclear conference, brought together for the first time activists, Hollywood celebrities, scientists, politicians and academics in an environmental movement (Allitt 106). Karen Silkwood, Three-Mile Island and Chernobyl now Fukushima have kept nuclear power an active, controversial and dynamic movement through the more recent global warming/climate change movement.
That movement first hit the headlines in the late 1980’s (1988). At that time computer models and projections (James Hansen) asserted the first link of “greenhouse gases”, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, melting polar ice caps, coastal flooding, disease, and famine—resulting from change in climate. In the same year the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the home base of the movement. Global warming picked up momentum in the 1990’s, Al Gore and Kyoto Agreement in 1997, the “hockey stick graph (1998)[ii], the Nobel Peace Prize to Gore and the IPCC in 2007, and the post 2012 Obama administration advocacy has pushed other environmental movements off the media/celebrity/electoral internet agenda—at least for a while.
Each of these waves/forms/movements endure, ebb and flow, and importantly evolve their focus and concern. Nuclear war, nuclear winter, global cooling in the Fifties/Sixties alerted researchers to ozone depletion, global surface warming, and climate change in the late eighties. Carl Sagan, a NASA scientist at the time, launched his career (1983) with a crusade against global cooling. Over population, famine and political instability was an early form of environmentalism which in recent years has morphed into concern for genetically modified (GM) seeds and crops. Endangered species, wildlife and wilderness were very serious concerns in the early and middle decades, but today we now talk about “eco-tourism” and a federal “national monument strategy”.
Pollution and pollution abatement was a very important form/wave that exerted a very profound impact on ED during the 1970’s through 1990—today it pales in significance to climate change despite its emergence as a Number One state and local crisis in the last few years. Nuclear power as an energy source has been a constant environmental concern, but has in the last decade given ground to fossil/carbon-based fuels. Suburbs were seriously thought of as anti-environmental (Rome)—but that proved to be a lost cause and whatever one thinks of them they are here to stay. In the Sixties and Seventies we talked about “growth management” and open space—and planners still do to some extent—but sustainability is much more in vogue (even though I confess I really don’t grasp why? The concept is so obvious and apple pie-like).
The point is obvious: environmentalism is an umbrella which over time, and within any period of time, includes many forms and movements—it is an example of our dreaded “smush” variable. NIMBY, BANANA and the joys of public hearings have become standards for economic developers. The reality that many adherents have adopted one or another of these forms as their “secular religion” or their prism for evaluating all economic development strategies, programs and tools has transformed the practice and the policy-making of our profession and policy area perhaps more than any other factor in the last half-century. Predictably, despite the rather huge impact each form of environmentalism exerted on ED, travelers on each of our Two Ships have developed their own reactions. There are a Privatist and a Progressive perspective on the smush brought about by environmentalism.
Smush simplification or not, however, the Two Ships generally do not react in the same way to an environmental issue. Most Privatists do not reject the various environmentalist manifestations and sensitivities. The Privatist business community if much to fractured to present a hostile united front; since the Reagan years significant elements of the Republican Party, for example, are quite sensitive to environmental issues—Privatists can share the same concerns as environmentalists. Yet, the stereotype conveyed by our media friends is that “environmentalists see their critics as greedy special interest groups that show no signs of conscience as they plunder the earth. Counter-environmentalists … see their adversaries as the enemies of economic growth [who] stop social progress and stifle initiative under an avalanche of bureaucratic regulation” (Allitt 8).
Environmentalism probably, of all ED-related issues, save tax abatement to business, inflames the Progressive discomfiture with profit and capitalism—and tosses in a tinge of anti-industrialism to boot. Conversely, while mostly sympathetic to a better environment, Privatists stress out over government regulation and expanding bureaucracies which, they believe, all too frequently use fear to increase their budgets and facilitate regulatory legislation. Regulatory bureaucracies usually trigger concerns with one or another of the competitive hierarchies. Big Sort polarized policy systems does little to bridge this gap.
Allitt (Allitt 1-8) suggests another key difference that Progressives tend to see “environmental crises” and apocalyptical compressed time frames that required urgent and often dramatic action by government. The dark side has been a tendency toward “Puritan jeremiads” against the wealthy and other sinners. Privatists, on the other hand, appear as optimists. Not to worry, economic growth, innovation, figuring out how to make a profit in solving the problem will lead to a solution. This does little to comfort agitated Progressives who counter that until they asserted the environmental problem business Privatists had done little or nothing to prevent it or make it go away. Progressives also observe government regulation has produced positive results in emissions reduction and endangered species, nuclear regulation and the like, and that big business has stifled innovation rather than disrupt existing profits. Media sensationalism and Hollywood celebrities do little to calm troubled water, and as I write during the 2016 election, with the disappearance of moderates in both parties, extreme partisanship and populism had rendered this issue into a cornerstone chasm between Red and Blue states.
Background
To best assess the impact of environmental movements on economic/community development, a good place to start is the passage of key federal legislation. Admittedly the issue of states as innovator of federal action is an important qualification—California was a national leader, often leading the federal government or at least providing a template and a track record. It is our hope that case studies in the several chapters ahead can help with this gap. But in the period under discussion (1960-1990) the federal government was in its most active intergovernmental leadership phase—and the feds have been a consistent primary force in environmental legislation. Federal legislation, often supported by subsequent Supreme and federal court decisions—and grants—and regulations/mandates carried across all regions, states and jurisdictions.
It is not unlikely the reader will be mildly surprised at the time line revealed by a simple chronological listing of key environmental legislation. Federal action, I suggest, comes earlier than most might realize. Also noticeable is the “forms or waves” discussed earlier. The real disruption to ED/CD was mostly over by 1980, certainly early 1990’s when a great deal of its impact was digested at the state and local levels. Below is a chronological listing of key federal legislation and important events.
- Atomic Energy Commission in civilian administration 1947
- Water Pollution Control Act of 1948
- October 1948 air pollution killed 20, hospitalized hundreds Donora PA
- Air Pollution Control Act of 1955
- Price-Anderson Act of 1957 (limited utilities liability for nuclear accident)
- 1962 Rachael Carson Silent Spring
- Clean Air of 1963, 1967
- Wilderness Act of 1964
- Highway Beautification Act of 1965
- 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill/Cuyahoga River fire
- National Environmental Policy Act of 1969
- Formation of Union of Concerned Scientists 1969 (Nuclear Power)
- April 22, 1970 First Earth Day
- Clean Air Act of 1970 (EPA created), 1977
- By Executive Order, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration October, 1970
- Water Pollution Control Act of 1972 (Superfund). 1977, 1987
- Yom Kippur War/OPEC gas and oil crisis
- Endangered Species Act of 1973
- Safe Water Drinking and Water Quality Act of 1974
- 1974-77 Alaska Oil pipeline
- 1975-1979 Tellico Dam (Tennessee), TVA and the Snail Darter
- Resource Conservation Recovery Act of 1976
- 1978 Love Canal
- National Energy Act of 1978 (initial subsidy for ethanol)
- 1979 Three-Mile Island – movie China Syndrome 1979
- Alaska Natural Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980
- Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation/Liability Act (CERCLA) 1980
- Spotted Owl v. Hodel (1988)
- Exxon Valdez Easter 1989
- Clean Air Act of 1990 (acid rain, ozone depletion, auto gas emissions)
Between the April 1970 First Earth Day and CERCLA in 1980, twenty-eight environmental laws were approved by Congress and the President[iii]. The collectivity of this legislation, as amended and expanded, is substantially the core of federal environmental legislation in 2017. In the chapters to follow the impact of these enactments and events will serve as a backdrop for our discussion of the incorporation of environmental issues into political culture, generational cohorts, jurisdictional policy system change, and—of course—the policy and practice of state and local economic/community development. Presidents Johnson, Nixon and Carter and the bipartisan Congresses of this era laid the foundation for contemporary economic development that followed after 1990. While not often praised, the legislation, it can be argued, was surprisingly effective in accomplishing its purposes—although many readers will strongly disagree with that last statement.
In the chapters that follow, environmentalism spurred a profound impact on our policy area and the practice of the profession. Usually, states would enact their version of the above legislation, and set up how local EDOs would act. Environmental impact statements, for example, would become a primary element/phase in ED development and redevelopment—and a surprising intrusion into many other ED activities as well. There was a noticeable difference in regional impacts as these laws were implemented. The effects on jurisdictional economic bases were equally notable although subtle and often unnoticed outside the industry/sector. Land use-related economic development, and basic material, energy and manufacturing sectors were profoundly disrupted during this period.
[i] Almost all scholars of the American West, from Fredrick Jackson Turner, John Muir, to Carl Abbott have consistently focused on the West’s ecology as core to its identity—and a serious element in its history, culture and politics. Much of the discipline of environmental history draws deeply from western case studies and dynamics of western history. It is not unreasonable to assert that western environmentalism, regardless of Privatist and Progressive cultures, has proved a home base for America’s environmental movement. Western state and local economic development has evidenced its own perspective integrating many of the environmental forms/waves into its strategies, programs and tools. For that matter, the eastern former hegemonic cities and states have been more sensitive to pollution control and abatement than wildlife, wilderness, land use, tourism, and energy-related environmentalism more prominent in the west.
[ii] Michael Mann, Raymond Bradley, and Malcolm Hughes, “Global Scale Temperature Pattern and Climate Forcings over the Past Six Centuries”, Nature, 392, 1998, pp. 779-87.
[iii] Patrick Allitt, a Climate of Crisis, op. cit., p.74. In his five years as President LBJ signed into law nearly300 conservation enactments (Allitt, p. 69).
Ron W. Coan 