Finding Hope: Environmentalism and the Anthropocene

Finding HopeEnvironmentalism and the Anthropocene Graeme Wynn A few years ago, American environmental historian Aaron Sachs reflected on his youthful admiration for the writing of Wallace Stegner, and on the powerful effect that Stegner's writing had on his own intellectual trajectory. Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs was especially influential. Published in 1992, the year that Sachs took his BA from Harvard, this collection of essays addressed a series of harrowing social and environmental questions, each deeply embedded in place and clearly rooted in the past. Pondering these, Sachs recognized the tight entanglement of personal, historical, and analytical perspectives in Stegner's writing, and he concluded that compelling stories are oft en forged from some combination of acute self-knowledge and shrewd awareness of the aspirations and frustrations, the triumphs and tribulations of those who preceded us.1 Stegner we know as a prolific novelist and historian, perhaps most famous for his work on the American West. He was also an environmentalist, a "man of the arts whose life was committed to environmental action," and a man who understood the need for unceasing commitment to the cause.2 "Environmentalism," he wrote in Where the Bluebird Sings, "is not a fact, and never has been. It is a job."3 In a similar vein, the famous Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki observed more recently that "environmentalism is a way of being, not a discipline . . . or specialty like law, medicine, plumbing, music or art. It's a way of seeing our place in the world and recognizing that our survival, health and happiness are inextricably dependent on nature."4 In the spirit of Stegner and Suzuki and the many others (from Rachel Carson to Greta Thunberg, and from Aldo Leopold to Bill McKibben) who have sought better stewardship of the earth, this essay seeks to [End Page 1] move the environmental agenda forward.5 Yet it does so retrospectively, shaped by the intertwined contingencies of character and circumstance, and conditioned by my own interests and experiences as a straddler of the institutional divide between the academic disciplines of history and geography. As Sachs realized his debt to Stegner, I find my own perspective shaped by the words and deeds of scholars, citizens, activists—let's call them all environmentalists, for want of a better generic label—who considered their place in the world and spoke up for, or intervened on behalf of, earth and nature.6 My discussion centers on ideas in the Western tradition. This is not to deny the value of Indigenous wisdom, or traditional ecological knowledge; nor is it to dismiss important work on nature in Asian or other traditions. There is now a vast literature on the environmental understandings of Indigenous peoples in various parts of the world, much of it the engaged and sympathetic work of scholars from beyond these communities.7 Students of comparative environmental philosophy have also done much in the last quarter century or so to document and expand appreciation of such topics as "Gandhi's Contributions to Environmental Thought and Action," "The Relevance of Chinese Neo-Confucianism for the Reverence of Nature," and "Conservation Ethics and the Japanese Intellectual Tradition."8 Simply put, any serious attempt to incorporate these rich literatures into this discussion would complicate and extend it beyond reason, and quickly run beyond the limits of my competence.9 Although environmentalism has never been my job, in any strict sense of that word, I take the point that it is a cause, a commitment that entails ongoing obligations, and align with those who have worked to realize its goals. They, of course, constitute a cast of thousands. Even limiting discussion to what American historian Samuel P. Hays called environmentalism—a post–World War II social movement set apart from earlier producer-led conservationist impulses by its consumerist orientation—opens a view of sprawling multitudes with diverse interests.10 Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, is oft en taken as the fountainhead of this concern, although citizen activists and scientists earlier documented the detrimental ecological and human health effects of DDT.11 Carson's powerful prose certainly gave shape and urgency to anxieties already seeded by the...

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