Crosscurrents In Environmentalism
The environmental movement is now divided into three parts, Sierra Club Chairman Michael McCloskey told participants at a symposium on "two decades of environmentalism." And science may be, in part, to blame for the split. Once a fairly coherent campaign, with different groups adopting similar strategies, environmentalists have gone their separate ways as the movement gains steam. In one camp are such mainstream groups as the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and the National Wildlife Federation, who argue for the use of government regulations to clean up the environment. A second faction, including the Environmental Defense Fund, the Conservation Foundation, and the Nature Conservancy, depend more heavily on market mechanisms as a means to promote change. Finally, radical groups such as Greenpeace and Earth! First have become both confrontational and controversial in their fight for a cleaner environment.
This splintering has occurred in part because of the ...
