Technical professionals in science, economics, and planning became closely involved in environmental affairs and hence with citizen environmental groups that expressed widely shared public demands. But they were uneasy in this relationship. They tended to believe that environmentalists pressed their case too far and too urgently. They were more comfortable with strategies to implement a more modest set of goals and objected to advancement to new levels of environmental progress. They tended to organize their ideas and activities around environmental management, both private and public; management, in turn, reached out to bring technical experts into administration. As citizens demanded further progress, both technical experts and management urged restraint and argued that the nation could not afford a greater commitment to environmental goals.

With these attitudes were closely allied the opinions of a wide range of the nation's leaders – officials of public and private institutions, including the media, and writers for influential newspapers and journals. These I refer to as “thought leaders.” Between the 1960s and the 1980s these idea makers shifted from support to skepticism about enlarged environmental programs. They came to believe that environmental progress might well exceed the nation's resources. They began to urge restraint, saying that the main task was not to facilitate the advance of environmental goals as one might advocate the advance of standards of living, education, and technology but, rather, to moderate them.