15.2 Debates about the Environment

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Explain the reasons for the rise of environmentalism around the world
• Identify ways in which environmental groups have faced resistance
• Describe the ways in which the global community has attempted to address environmental issues like climate change

While concern for the Earth and anxiety about the negative effects humans have wrought is hardly new, the modern environmental movement, with its characteristic public activism, has roots in nineteenth-century reactions to industrialization. Writers of that time, like George Perkins Marsh, John Ruskin, Octavia Hill, and many others, expressed a romantic view of nature that contrasted sharply with the industrial transformations they witnessed around them. Their ideas gave birth to preservation efforts and the creation of national parks, first in the United States and later in Australia, South Africa, India, and nations in Europe. Environmental concern has only grown stronger as societies around the world must now grapple with the enormous and ongoing consequences of increasing industrialization, manifested particularly in the global threat of climate change.