"In “The Long Green” Paul Hawken reminds us that environmentalism didn’t just happen when a bunch of young idealists thought it would be cool to have an Earth Day, or even when Rachel Carson published Silent Spring in 1962 (the contention of a new book by William Souder).
No, environmentalism’s always been latent but real (if not so labeled) for as long as there have been indigenous peoples with a deep sense of themselves as nature’s children. In the western world it’s more recent, coinciding with social justice movements in general and the rise of biological science in particular. “The 19th century may come to be called the Age of Ecology, thanks not only to the scientific ethos of Darwin and Huxley but to a popular mindset framed by the likes of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Horace Greeley, and John Muir..."
Continues at Up@dawn