Reworking the Environmental Movement :: Essays Papers

Reworking the Environmental MovementThe front Earth Day, April 22, 1970, aimed to protest the corporate and disposalal abuse of the environment. In its success, an slipstream of environmental aw arness ensued rooted in the movements ethic of ecological teaching method and scientific questioning of the human impact on nature. Environmentalism, an off-shoot of scientific hypotheses and ethics, created an whim for federal legislation. In the subsequent years, Congress passed many highly successful acts committed to the protection of natural resources and human health. The objectives of environmental activists were being cognise with increasing enthusiasm in the democratic system. In the 1980s during the Reagan revolution, congressional spending was forced against the proverbial firing squad. Arguments surfaced that too much worldly concern money was being spent on the environment and that the federal government should play a much reduced role in federal regulation. The conserva tive voice criticized the governmental restrictions on private office with the aim of environmental protection. It was seen as a breach of the Fifth Amendment that prohibits the taking of property without just compensation called federal takings. Since then, the debate has sprung an environmental policy bounce consisting of the property rights movement, which contends the above argument, and its sister movement, wise-use, that supports the privatization of natural resources. Reagans deregulation and remissness of environmental standards fueled the fire of the movements intensity in which national assemblages became larger and more governmentally driven. However, in the face of the backlash, environmentalism was caught betwixt its ethic to protect and its struggle to be heard as an influential political voice. Thus, the movement has suffered great polarization, divided internally into camps that still make it today. One of the most dangerous aspects of the environmental moveme nts political situation is its misuse of science to predict almost apocalyptic scenarios to pull ahead their agenda. This paper intends to provide a criticism of environmental policies based on three criteria the internal decay of environmental organizations, its undiminished reliance on broad governmental regulation, and the dangerous politicization of science to meet narrow group interests. Even the most philanthropic organizations, such as environmental groups, are plagued with heterogeneous agendas. Internal to the environmental groups seemingly monolithic facade are many socio-economic classs that corrupt the groups progress. The movements best known division is between the national and local groups. The national groups cover many environmental issues and are most closely tied with the federal government.