"Earth Day" and Environmentalism

“Earth Day” and Environmentalism

On the Occasion of Earth Day 2020

M Hasan Laskar

First ever Earth Day held on April 22, 1970 in United States of America. It was described as the largest human demonstration in human history. More importantly, the first Earth Day marked the beginning of modern environmentalism through environmental activism. About 20 million participants showed their concern for environment and affirmed their commitment to a clean environment by planting trees, removing garbage, showing protest against industrial pollution and chemical use (Guha, 2000). The first Earth Day was not a sudden event rather result of deep rooted ideology of environmentalism developed since the publication of book “Man and Nature’ (1864) by George Perkins Marsh to the book “Silent Spring” (1962) by Rachel Carson. The Marsh’s book was marked as the beginning of the ideology of scientific conservation of nature, enhanced the first wave of environmentalism that started through the criticism of industrialization in England by poetic expression of William Wordsworth (1770-1850) and John Ruskin (1819-1900). Both Wordsworth and Ruskin was staunch critic of industrialization, which according to them destroyed the countryside, lakes, air, water bodies and whole environment due to expansion of railway, development projects and manufacturing industries. “Silent Spring” revolutionized the concern of adverse affect of chemicals patented during and after the war such as dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT) that was prepared to use in agriculture for better productivity.  Carson’s ‘Silent Spring’ was developed scientific consciousness among people, scientists and activists regarding the adverse affect of chemicals in human health causes by the food chain process.

Earth Day 1972 led the development of many environmental movement across the world, most prominent of which was wilderness movement known as “Deep Ecology” in America. “Deep Ecology” advocated for ‘biospheric egalitarianism’_ placing humans on a more or less equal footing with other species (Guha, 2000). Environmentalism of the poor in African countries was the most remarkable environmental activism that exposed the evil act of making poor African nations the dumping zones of industrial effluents by developed industrialized countries. It further led to the rise of environmental racism issue in global level. Consequently ‘environmental justice’ as new ideology emerged within environmentalism that raised the issue of unequal affect of environmental degradation. Environmentalism in almost all the third world and developing countries are labelled as socio-economic justice movement. Developing countries like India has been facing both ‘development crisis’ due to extreme poverty and unemployment and ‘environmental crisis’ due over-exploitation of natural resources and displacement of the millions of people from forests, river banks and plain areas caused by developmental projects. Thus environmentalism in India is also regarded as social justice movement. Such environmental movements have erupted in different time period in particular regions of India. But there is no evidence of environmentalism for quality of life in Indian land. That does not mean India is less affected country by pollution and climate change rather one of the most vulnerable in present day. Unfortunately, effluent section of India’s population advocates for materialism (material development) and less effluent section or poor section cannot afford for environmentalism for quality of life. So environmentalism in India is mostly visible as movement for better livelihood.

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Article is written by M Hasan Laskar, Assistant Professor, Dept. of Sociology, University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya. He is author books and founder of You Tube channel “Sociology for Life”. He is also the editor of this Blog “Sociology Blog”.

It is the writer’s own view point developed from his research in Environmental Sociology. He is mostly influenced by Ramachandra Guha’s book__ ‘Environmentalism A Global History’.