September 26, 1974
Page 32725
ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I would like to share with my colleagues an article by Dr. Edward Schriver, associate professor of history at the University of Maine, entitled "Clio and the Environment: Some Thoughts on Teaching Environmental History." The article appeared in the Summer 1974 issue of the Phi Kappa Phi Journal.
Many Americans tend to feel that environmental concern is a new phenomenon, but we should not ignore the lessons of history in this area – as in other areas of public concern. As Dr. Schriver suggests, environmental history can teach us which past dangers to avoid and can allow us to integrate what we have learned about ourselves and our interdependencies. It can also help us avoid portraying the so-called environmental movement as a battle between heroes and villains, or between preservationists and utilitarians. In his article, Dr. Schriver offers a discussion not only of these points, but also of how they can be presented in the classroom.
I ask unanimous consent that the article from the Phi Kappa Phi Journal be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
CLIO AND THE ENVIRONMENT: SOME THOUGHTS ON TEACHING ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY
(By Edward Schriver)
How to teach environmental history has yet to be clearly thought through. Environmental history – or what has been called conservation history – in the past has had many pitfalls. One of the dangers has been the devil theory of causation which forces the teacher to focus upon alleged heroes and villains. One incarnation of this syndrome, for instance, leads the instructor to portray the conservation struggle as a battle between the preservationists in all their purity and the utilitarian in all their practicality, between the symbolic presence of John Muir, keeper of the Sierras, and Gifford Pinchot, leader of the prudent, but tree-cutting foresters.
Today we require more than an avoidance of past dangers to sound conservation history; we need to integrate what we have learned about ourselves and our interdependencies.
Applying sound historical and interdisciplinary principles is obviously more easily outlined than implemented. History 177, History of the Treatment of the American Environment, which I teach is one attempt to bridge the gap between the old conservation history and the new environmental history.
History 177 can be approached from four perspectives: the historical, the man-nature, the environmental crisis, and defending the environment. Needless to mention, none of these perspectives is self-contained.
What historical insights can a teacher prudently present in a one semester course which covers the whole spectrum of American environmental history from before 1607 to the present?
To reply to the above question, three basic strands of environmental history are isolated in America's past: the utilitarian, the aesthetic, and the ecological. The utilitarian strand can be illustrated by reference to the life and work of George Perkins Marsh. Marsh's Man and Nature, first published in 1864, has latterly become a classic to which many turn for guidance. One can move from Marsh to consider Gifford Pinchot and his concept of conservation which includes the admonition to use natural resources for the benefit of all the American people, not merely for the welfare of a special few. Pinchot advocated that scientific principles and prudence be applied so that the resources base would not be destroyed.
Practical elements in environmental history can be elucidated by the examples offered after Pinchot by the TVA, by the water quality and clean air acts, and by Earth Day, 1970.
The aesthetic strand may be found in the words and thoughts of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir. This strand seems to be more difficult to get across to some people. The utilitarian approach to the land is clear; use America's resources, everybody use them, but use them scientifically and wisely. On the other hand, appreciation of shade, color, and line in nature is more difficult to portray, even with the eventful controversy surrounding a man such as John Muir.
The insight that nature has a life of its own and that life must be respected and cooperated with, if for no other reason than that it is beautiful, is very hard to document. The co-ordinate concept of quality of life is analogous to respect for nature is now only just beginning to permeate the public mind.
The ecological strand, as exemplified by the American Indian and his accommodation to his surroundings, has also just recently come into public purview. This awareness is being heightened daily by one series of man induced crises after another. The recent past has presented us with examples in Donora, Pennsylvania in 1948; London in 1952; and in subsequent occurrences (not the least being the current energy crisis). Nuclear fallout and Rachel Carson have added to the burden of the evidence.
The ecological strand runs squarely against the American ethos. Aldo Leopold's dictum that we are indeed members of the total biotic community (not the masters of it) is difficult for Americans as a people to follow. Even harder to comprehend is the corollary of Barry Commoner: "There is no such thing as a free lunch."
Our economic reasoning, for example, has yet to face directly the notion that our surroundings may well put even more severe limitations on future development and on our exploitative activities than they already do. The American mental set – conditioned by generations of apparent success – has been expansive. The idea that the environment must be our partner in business may well be too much for us to accept at this point in time.
There is, naturally, the alternative which allows us to ignore the interaction and interdependence of living systems. However, we will only delude ourselves and invariably do ourselves and our fellows a great deal of damage (and bequeath a terrible legacy to the future) if we persist as a nation in this type of approach.
Other major concerns are also considered in History 177: the juxtaposition of the concept of wilderness and the American, mind; how Americans have viewed the frontier through the decades; the general direction of land law development including the Public Land Law Review Commission's Report in 1970, One Third of the Nation's Land; the establishment and activities of selected government agencies involved with the land (the Corps of Engineers, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Reclamation Service, and the Soil Conservation Service; to note but a few); the Progressive Era of American politics and conservation (including the first major national resource battle over the damming of Hetch Hetchy Valley in California); the smozzle caused by the Teapot Dome oil scandal; and the age of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the present.
Any acceptable introductory text – particularly Hans Huth's Nature and the American and Roderick Nash's Wilderness and the American Mind – will give the student enough material to move to more advanced studies.
The second course perspective, man-nature, serves to illustrate the character of the relationship between mankind and his environment. There is an almost endless list of topics, books, and lectures in this area. Only a few of them will be noted for purposes of illustration.
The classic book – mentioned already – is by Aldo Leopold. His A Sand County Almanac should be pondered by every interested American historian who is not familiar with its message.
Through his career with the Forest Service and with the University of Wisconsin, Leopold drank deeply of the man-land connection. From his emerging love affair (not a sentimental, gushing relationship it must be made plain) with the land, he perceived the requirement for a land ethic. Of this ethic, he wrote with depth and feeling.
"When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect. There is no other way for land to survive the impact of mechanized man, nor for us to reap from it the esthetic harvest it is capable, under science, of contributing to culture. That land is a community is the basic concept of ecology, but that land is to be loved and respected is an extension of' ethics. That land yields a cultural harvest is a fact long known, but latterly often forgotten."
Edward Abbey's anguished cry from the Arches National Monument in Utah stands in stark contrast to the moderate words of Aldo Leopold. Abbey in his Desert Solitaire comes forward as an angry defender of the wonders of nature against the onslaughts of Tourist Culture. With a venom-tipped pen he charges:
"At once I spot the unmistakable signs of tourist culture – tin cans and tinfoil dumped in a fireplace, a dirty sock dangling from a bush, a worn-out tennis shoe in the bottom of a clear spring, gum wrappers, cigarette butts, and bottle caps everywhere. This must be it, the way to Rainbow Bridge; it appears that we may have come too late. Slobivious americanus has been here first."
From the bitter exhortations of an Edward Abbey, one can shift to the deep flowing insights of John Hay in Defense of Nature:
"The field of life, and not the landscape, garden, or even wilderness, terms we use to define our relationship with nature, this cosmic field, is where the hunting is. How could an Indian or an Eskimo, following his prey without help from guns and machines, risking his life each time he went out to hunt, not know himself to belong to the same earth as his quarry? How, since he was so near in self and in spirit, could he not venerate the powers that give and take away, and even ask forgiveness of that animal he was about to kill?"
Ian McHarg provides still another focus on the man-land relationship. If, McHarg insists, we design with nature, we will build well and perhaps will avoid ecological disaster. While perhaps trite, the margarine ad on television makes this point; It's not nice to fool Mother Nature with an artificial product (because if you do, you will regret it at some later date). McHarg produces his evidence in the form of the wreckage cottages (and other data) on the New Jersey sand dunes.
John McPhee bares the preservationist mind set toward man-land in Encounters with the Archdruid (who happens to be David Brower, formerly of the Sierra Club, now with Friends of the Earth). Brower faces three opponents: a mining engineer who believes that our well-being rests with finding and extracting more and more minerals; a resort developer who regards all conservationists as "Druids;" and a builder of gigantic dams who grew up in the dry west and who deeply believes in the power of impounded water.
The environmental crisis is the third perspective. For the eye, other than direct personal observation, there is ample evidence of the malaise in the National Geographic Society's As We Live and Breathe.
One cannot enter this area without encountering Barry Commoner and Paul Ehrlich, head to head. For Commoner, the crisis in large measure is one of uncontrolled innovation in technology; Paul Ehrlich, on the other hand, contends that Commoner has seriously neglected the environmental growth.
The environmental crisis and its sources, history, and current status is multi-faceted: the debates over the future of nuclear energy, the water crisis, the pesticide and herbicide battles, the struggle to save endangered species, the attempts to recover air purity, the debate over economic growth versus a stable state, the presence of massive spills of oil in the oceans, the threat to health from metal poisoning, the shoot-out over strip mining, the fears over chemicals in our foods, the decisions over clearcutting, and all the other symptoms of the problem.
There are those who insist that too much is being made over the so-called environmental dilemma. They too must be heard, if not heeded.
John Maddox, a former editor of the English journal Nature, has written the most uncompromising refutation of the doomsayers. Maddox tells his readers in The Doomsday Syndrome that while there are certainly environmental problems, there is nothing amiss that doing business-as-usual with a bit more caution will not alleviate. He takes it upon himself to castigate a veritable galaxy of environmental leaders: Rene Dubos, Paul Ehrlich, Kenneth Boulding, to mention but three. Maddox has special scorn to heap upon the late Rachel Carson for alarming us all in 1962 with Silent Spring.
John Maddox and those who agree with his point of view both in Britain and the United States, further are appalled by the suggestions offered by Dennis Meadows and the MIT team in Limits to Growth and by the journalist editors of the Ecologist in Blueprint for Survival. A Sussex University group has given the Maddox forces ammunition in a study done on the Limits entitled Models of Doom? The Sussex researchers uphold the same optimistic view that John Maddox posits and look to man's ingenuity and to past escapes to sustain us.
Defending the environment is the concluding perspective in History 177. From colonial times until the present, attempts have been made by government and private individuals and bodies to protect the land and its resources. Colonial officials were completely aware of the need to protect natural resources. Their inclinations were blunted, of course, by the prevailing climate of opinion which was amenable to taming, to conquering. and to subduing the land.
To conclude that Americans as a people require a change of heart, lifestyle, and way of doing things is obvious. Rene Dubos hits the issue squarely when he writes:
"Conservation therefore implies a creative interplay between man and animals, plants, and other aspects of Nature, as well as between man and his fellows. The total environment, including the remains of the past, acquires human significance only when harmoniously incorporated into the elements of man's life."
Raymond F. Dasmann, John P. Milton, and Peter H. Freeman carry the issue from the point to which Rene Dubos brings it in the above statement:
"But just as it has long been obvious that development efforts which ignore economics and engineering are likely to founder, so it should by now be equally obvious that development efforts that take no account of the ecological 'rules of the game' are also bound to suffer adverse consequences."
Lynton K. Caldwell, a political scientist, proposes defending the environment through professional research-based management. Besides scientific and ecologically sound stewardship of our resources, an understanding and use of legal tools to protect the environment are required.
What can the citizen do to prevent or to correct abuses of the public interest? What are the legal ramifications of the Calvert Cliffs Decision or the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970?
On the practical level, how can the public get involved? A spate of good and bad popular books answer this question: from The User's Guide to the Protection of the Environment to Teaching for Survival.
No special uniqueness is posited for the approach mentioned above. No brief is set forward for the exclusive application of this means to teach environmental history. Certainly, the scope is widened to include other disciplines besides history (environmental geoscience, economics, geography and others); this will alienate some and may be a danger in and of itself.
Nothing is said about the researching and writing of environmental history. This activity complements its teaching and is necessary to growth in understanding. Lawrence Rakestraw cautions moderation in churning out endless reams of environmental history. I agree. We need to re-think what it is that we are doing. In his conclusions about our perception of the task, Rakestraw is correct:
"Historians who regard conservation as past politics might profit by a spell on the sawmill greenchain, or as trail workers for the Park Service to get some grassroots insights. Those who look at conservation from the field would profit from a government internship and exposure to bureaucratic frustration. We need better work as both government agencies and private groups look to history for guidance and decision making. Resource decisions are too important to be made on the basis of shoddy scholarship and faulty hypothesis."
"It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows." – Epictetus.