History in North America
Anti-environmentalism is a movement against the environmentalism movement. Its origination in North America can be marked by a speech delivered by Lewis Powell to the US Chamber of Commerce in 1971. Several acts had been passed in years prior to Powell’s speech in favor of environmentalism, such the Wilderness Act 1964, Federal Wild and Scenic Rivers Act 1968, National Environmental Policy Act 1969. Powell directed his audience against the environmental movement and promoted a pro-industry and anti-environmental view. James Watt was initially the most well-known anti-environmentalist. He advocated free-for-all mining, ranching, and drilling.
In 1988 a Wise Use Campaign was introduced by Republican senator, Mark Hatfield. The Wise Use Campaign supported unrestricted access to timber and other resources. Wise Use activists exploited the population’s fear of job and property security loss. The campaign placed a barrier between workers and environmentalists. The Wise Use Campaign used bumper stickers, phone-ins and faxes to promote their views. Wise Use and Republicans were the pioneering groups to kick off anti-environmentalism.
The economic recession that began in 1990 enhanced anti-green and pro-industry views. A group called Alliance for America was created with 125 anti-environment and pro-industry groups. In 1994, the US did not pass a Biodiversity Treaty. Another group that was created in the 90’s was called Earth Day Alternatives. They were also counter-environmentalists. This group labelled environmentalists as “anti-human” and extremists. The Earth Day Alternative group promoted three things. They aimed to privatise resources for exploitation, advocate pollution to be permitted as trade between companies, to discredit environmental science. Heritage was a group that was also created with a laissez-faire approach toward the environment. Anti-environmentalists were motivated by the fact that the ICI created deceptive green advertising.
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“We might hypothetically possess ourselves of every technological resource on the North American continent, but as long as our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be “revolutionary” but not transformative.”
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“The North American system only wants to consider the positive aspects of reality. Men and women are subjected from childhood to an inexorable process of adaptation; certain principles, contained in brief formulas are endlessly repeated by the press, the radio, the churches, and the schools, and by those kindly, sinister beings, the North American mothers and wives. A person imprisoned by these schemes is like a plant in a flowerpot too small for it: he cannot grow or mature.”
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“Tonight I will speak up and interrupt
your letters, warning you that wars are coming,
that the Count will die, that you will accept
your America back to live like a prim thing
on the farm in Maine.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)