by By Thomas R. Dunlap
Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books/University of Washington Press, 2004
This is a book that cannot easily be reduced to a brief review. It defies such review because it is itself a review of the writings, thinkers, and doers of the American environmental movement and their historical roots in science, philosophy, and religion. In the author’s words, it “examines environmentalism, its roots in the culture, and its development as a movement in religious terms – as a way of accepting the universe – in order to think about its foundations and the source and depth of its passions.” Central to Dunlap’s study is the notion that if, in our scientific and rational age, “environmentalism strikes to the level of religion, if it speaks to how we should live, then perhaps it has something to say to conventional creeds.”
Dunlap weaves a seamless philosophical trail, from the Enlightenment of the seventeenth century through Romanticism as interpreted by Emerson, to set the stage for all who were to later shape the modern environmental movement. All the actors are present, from Thoreau and Muir to Rachael Carson, Gifford Pinchot, Aldo Leopold, Barry Commoner, and Edward Abbey, to mention only a few of the many Dunlop casts in his quest to understand “environmentalism as an expression of the human impulse toward religion….”
The first two chapters – “Newton’s Disciples” and “Emerson’s Children” – are a complex analysis of the roots of environmentalism in reason and science as expressed in the conservation movement that accepted America’s commitment to progress and growth, tempered by the American fascination with “Nature” as expressed by “the first nature saints,” Thoreau and Muir.
He then explores Wilderness as “one of environmentalism’s first causes” and examines environmentalism’s “development of religious values” from its beginning in the 1960s to the present. The final chapter – “Conclusion: ‘Quo Vadis?’”– weaves a fascinating path into the future, suggesting that “seeing environmentalism in religious terms would focus . . . on what ought to be done, help environmentalists confront their opponents, provide a way to make common cause with outside groups, and allow environmentalists to appreciate more clearly the roots of their own movement.”
While this is a deeply philosophical essay, Dunlap is far more than a historian of environmental philosophy. He is a clear-eyed and practical critic of the institutions that environmentalism has spawned, succinctly describing their roles in defining the diverse perspectives of American culture toward nature and natural resource development. His “review” is remarkably objective and balanced. Yet his objectivity never obscures his relentless search for the religious tendencies in the wider movement.
This is an important book for the times in which we live. It offers something for everyone to disdain, especially those demanding a specific way to environmental salvation – be it resource management, wilderness preservation, energy independence, or the end of consumerism. Nor does he claim many victories for the movement in its crusade to change the world. But no one can deny Dunlop’s faith that “environmentalism has embarked on a great enterprise” that “seeks dreams large enough to inspire individuals and wise enough to guide humanity, dreams that speak to our lives and the wonderful world in which we live them.”