Closing the Environmental Decade

Report Outline
Assessment of the Seventies
Origins of Environmentalism
Changes in the Movement
Special Focus

Assessment of the Seventies

Question of Sustaining 1970s Momentum

New Year's Day 1980 will mark the tenth anniversary of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which had as its principal objective the encouragement of a “productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment.” President Nixon made the NEPA signing ceremony on Jan. 1, 1970, his first official act of the new decade, saying that “the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment.” Many Americans agreed that the environment deserved far greater attention, and on April 22, 1970, less than four months after Nixon inaugurated the environmental decade, thousands of people gathered in cities and communities around the country to celebrate Earth Day.

Now that the Seventies are drawing to a close, many of the people who first met on Earth Day to demonstrate in favor of a better environment are planning to commemorate the occasion and celebrate the achievements of the past decade. But the festivities may be somewhat muted. For there is widespread fear that environmental concerns will fare poorly in the Eighties, as efforts to augment domestic energy supplies and reduce the costs associated with pollution abatement loom ever larger in the nation's affairs. President Carter, who received some of his strongest support from conservationists during his first two years in office, now is in trouble with environmentalists largely because of his attempts to expedite energy projects of urgent national interest.

To be sure, Americans are most unlikely to revert in the next decade to the habits of an era in which the quality of their air, water and land received little or no attention. In contrast to the situation 10 years ago, when environmentalists were widely regarded as kooky hippies who wanted to give up all the gifts of modern industrial civilization for the sake of returning to a mythical world of plants and animals, environmentalism today is firmly entrenched in the nation's consciousness. The jargon of environmentalism — “ecological balance,” “recycling,” “renewable resources” — has become a part of every educated person's working vocabulary. The small groups of activists who organized Earth Day in 1970 have developed into large, highly professional organizations. But such organizations probably will be working under increasingly adverse conditions in the Eighties, and most environmentalists doubt that the major legislative achievements of the 1970s will be duplicated in the next decade.