Back More
Salem Press

Table of Contents

Encyclopedia of Climate Change, Third Edition

Environmental movement

by Katrina Darlene Taylor

Category(s): Environmentalism, conservation, and ecosystems

The organizations and individuals that make up the environmental movement have been instrumental in bringing the issue of climate change into the mainstream and to the attention of the general public. By raising public awareness, the environmental movement has helped pressure politicians and the private sector to take action.

Key Concepts

direct action: nonconventional political activity, including protests and demonstrations

environmental paradox: the tendency of the environmental movement to work within the system that may be responsible for the problems the movement seeks to address

individualization of responsibility: placing responsibility for climate change on individuals rather than on businesses, corporations, or the government

precautionary principle: a policy rule that one should act to prevent severe harm, even if the likelihood of that harm occurring is unknown or potentially low

BACKGROUND

The environmental movement began in the 1960’s as a grassroots effort to address local and regional environmental issues. With increasing public support throughout the 1970’s, it became highly professionalized and began focusing mostly on federal politics. The environmental movement became concerned with global warming in the late 1980’s. Since then, the movement has employed a combination of direct action and traditional lobbying methods to prompt action by the public and private sectors to address climate change.

PROMOTING AWARENESS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

The environmental movement has promoted both awareness and action in response to climate change through educational and motivational campaigns. These campaigns have targeted the general public, all levels of government, businesses, and international civil society. They have encouraged civic and personal responsibility, made elected officials aware of public opinion, and sought to hold them accountable for responding to it with appropriate legislation. There have been several campaigns in the early twenty-first century, including Step It Up, a grassroots effort to encourage people to lobby their congressional representatives to take action on climate change, and the Climate Change Solutions Campaign, which connects thousands of national and international members of the environmental movement. Both of these campaigns and many others rely on the Internet to reach and educate people.

Another method of bringing about awareness is through films. An Inconvenient Truth (2006), the U.S. documentary on climate change, however flawed, presented by Al Gore, is a good example of this tactic. Mr. Gore continues to tour making presentations upon which the film is based. There has been criticism of his presentation, especially in Alberta, in which he disparages the development of the Athabasca Tar Sands as an oil resource. Critics claim hypocrisy, pointing out that the oil extracted there is purchased by the United States. To his credit, he typically does not get paid for his appearances and the carbon footprint associated with his appearances are offset to be net zero. This has not stopped rumors of dinner appearances for which the price of admission was $250,000 a plate. This combination of information and disinformation has not served the environmental movement in the general public.

SPONSORING PUBLIC AND PRIVATE SOLUTIONS

Traditionally, the environmental movement focused on federal legislation to combat global warming. However, this strategy has proven fruitless for almost two decades. In 2005, major environmental groups began to target state and local governments, some of which are more willing than Congress to address climate change. The Cool Cities Campaign is an example of the environmental movement encouraging action at the local level. This campaign aims to persuade cities to sign the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, a commitment started in 2005 to advance the initiatives of the Kyoto Protocol at the local level. Additionally, the movement has targeted the federal government through litigation related to the Clean Air Acts (1963-1990) in an attempt to force the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate carbon emissions.

The environmental movement has also targeted the private sector through a variety of campaigns, including efforts to discourage the production of sports-utility vehicles (SUVs). In 2004, the Apollo Alliance was established as a large-scale attempt to address climate change by forging a coalition between environmental groups and labor unions. The alliance is working on the Apollo Project, an effort to create 1 million new jobs in the renewable energy sector and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

DEALING WITH THE OPPOSITION

The environmental movement has used a variety of strategies to overcome opposition to action on climate change. A major argument against acting on climate change is that the lack of total scientific consensus does not warrant the economic investment needed. The environmental movement has advocated the use of the precautionary principle in making decisions about climate policy. The principle is popular in other industrial countries, particularly European Union member countries, and holds that even if the risk of climate change is uncertain, the potential for catastrophe is great enough to warrant immediate action to avoid it: Certainty of the risk of severe consequences may come only when it is too late to prevent or counter them.

CRITICISMS

Despite the efforts of the environmental movement to address climate change, several critiques have emerged of the movement’s dominant climate-related strategies. Kirkpatrick Sale notes that there is an “environmental paradox” that has resulted from the movement’s tendency to work within the system that is causing environmental degradation rather than confront the actors and encourage changes to the system itself. Michael Maniates provides a critique of the “individualization of responsibility,” a tendency of environmental groups to encourage individuals to take on responsibility by reducing their own carbon footprints rather than confronting corporate or government entities: Environmental groups, for example, encourage people to use less fossil fuels by biking, carpooling, or driving more efficient vehicles. The argument against this tactic is that alleviating the global warming problem requires much more than individual action, and by focusing on campaigns on individuals, environmentalists implicitly absolve bigger entities that generate large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions of their responsibility. The most notable critique was presented in 2004 by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in their essay, “Death of Environmentalism.” The essay criticizes the movement for relying on tactics that worked for issues like acid rain but are inadequate to combat a global environmental problem such as climate change. Environmental organizations responded by revamping their strategies in 2005 to include a more grassroots approach.

CONTEXT

Global warming has become a unifying issue for the environmental movement. It provides an overarching concern that covers all of the issues that environmental organizations deal with, such as biodiversity, preservation, and human health. The ability of the movement to promote the radical changes necessary to mitigate climate change has been called into question. As the organizations and individuals within the movement increase their efforts, some scientists warn that climate change may soon become irreversible. It is yet to be determined whether the sort of concerted effort of all levels of government, consumers, and individuals in nations throughout the globe will agree to implement the sorts of changes that environmentalists believe to be necessary to respond to global warming.

Further Reading

1 

Clapperton, Jonathan and Liza Piper, eds. Environmental Activism on the Ground: Small, Green and Indigenous Organizing. University of Calgary Press, 2019.

2 

Levy, Janey. Inside the Environmental Movement. Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2017.

3 

Maniates, Michael F. “Individualization: Plant a Tree, Buy a Bike, Save the World.” Global Environmental Politics 1, no. 3 (2001): 31-52.

4 

Peterson, Christy. Earth Day and the Environmental Movement: Standing Up for Earth. Millbrook Press, 2020.

5 

Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement, 1962-1992. Hill and Wang, 1993.

6 

Schellenberger, Michael, and Ted Nordhaus. “Death of Environmentalism.” n.p.: Authors, 2004.

7 

Shabecoff, Philip. A fierce green fire: The American environmental movement. Island Press, 2012.

8 

Spears, Ellen. Rethinking the American Environmental Movement Post-1945. Routledge, 2019.

See also: Biodiversity ; Carson, Rachel; Catastrophist-cornucopian debate ; Civilization and the environment; Conservation and preservation; Deforestation; Ecological impact of global climate change; Ecosystems; Environmental law; Friends of the Earth ; Greenpeace; International Union for Conservation of Nature; Sierra Club; Sustainable development.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Taylor, Katrina Darlene. "Environmental Movement." Encyclopedia of Climate Change, Third Edition, edited by Richard M. Renneboog, Salem Press, 2022. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=Climate3_0208.
APA 7th
Taylor, K. D. (2022). Environmental movement. In R. M. Renneboog (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Climate Change, Third Edition. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Taylor, Katrina Darlene. "Environmental Movement." Edited by Richard M. Renneboog. Encyclopedia of Climate Change, Third Edition. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2022. Accessed December 14, 2025. online.salempress.com.