From traditions to movements

Like many, if not all, social movements, the environmental movements that developed in the 1960s and 1970s did not emerge from nothing. Although many of the formative issues were new, and many of the forms of protest and practical activity were innovative, the substantive content of the environmental movement was derived from many sources (Eyerman and Jamison 1991: 66f). The movements, we might say, served as a catalyst for the mobilization, or creative recombination, of several distinct traditions of ideas and practices.

Particularly important in the historical context of the 1960s was the mixing of inspiration from both the cultural and the political revolts that had erupted in that turbulent decade. The environmental movement combined the neo-romanticism of the counterculture, with its questioning of material-based progress, with the political radicalism of the so-called new left. Many early environmentalists represented a sort of hybrid hippie–marxist, emphasizing both the spiritual and the political dimensions of the environmental “crisis.” But there was also, from the outset, a touch of practicality thrown in for good measure, a constructive urge that inspired many a technically minded activist to take part in the emerging movement.