Accounts of the rise of environmentalism frequently have emphasized its roots in the conservation movement of the early twentieth century. But environmental differed markedly from conservation affairs. The conservation movement was an effort on the part of leaders in science, technology, and government to bring about more efficient development of physical resources. The environmental movement, on the other hand, was far more wide-spread and popular, involving public values that stressed the quality of human experience and hence of the human environment. Conservation was an aspect of the history of production that stressed efficiency, whereas environment was a part of the history of consumption that stressed new aspects of the American standard of living.

Environmental objectives arose out of deep-seated changes in preferences and values associated with the massive social and economic transformation in the decades after 1945. Conservation had stirred technical and political leaders and then worked its way down from the top of the political order, but environmental concerns arose later from a broader base and worked their way from the middle levels of society outward, constantly to press upon a reluctant leadership. Many of the tendencies in efficient management of material resources originating in the conservation era came into sharp conflict with newer environmental objectives. The two sets of values were continually at loggerheads.

At the outset we explore this discontinuity between conservation and environment, this transformation of aim from efficient production to better quality of life, in order to define the historical distinctiveness of environmental affairs.