by Greg Walcher, E&E Legal Senior Policy Fellow
The Daily Sentinel
Near the end of the Reagan-Bush era, in 1991, the Gallup poll showed more than three-fourths of all Americans — 78% — identified themselves as environmentalists. Nearly 40% called themselves “strong environmentalists.” But 30 years later, Gallup says those numbers had fallen to just 41% and 22%. What in the world caused such a precipitous decline?
Just when one thinks every angle of a subject like the environment has been covered, and covered ad nauseum, along comes an utterly new and original analysis. A friend and former colleague of mine, Dr. David Schnare, has plowed new ground in an important book called “The Road of the Steward: From Ancient Roots to Post-Modern Environmentalism,” a fresh and novel approach to understanding what has gone wrong with today’s environmental movement.
Should we interpret people’s growing disconnect with environmentalism as a sign that they care less than they once did about their natural surroundings? On the contrary, Americans have always cared about the environment, and they still do — Gallup says 68% say they worry at least sometimes about the environment. Rather, many have simply become less comfortable with the language and image of environmentalism. The word itself is falling out of fashion, like groovy, far-out, and square — all of which were popular when I was young.
But as Schnare documents thoroughly, environmentalism is not falling out of favor just because a new generation wants to use new slang. The conservation movement itself has changed over the decades, evolving from the notion that humans have an almost spiritual duty to future generations, to steward the land, air, and water, into a more modern concept of environmentalism that is very different. It seeks to transform the world economy and culture into something none of us would recognize, and most of us don’t want.
