In fact, there are two major social movements which have converged in the last twenty years under the general heading of "environmentalism." One is the movement which began with the likes of John Muir or Teddy Roosevelt. This was the preservation, or conservation movement, joined by the hunters, which fought for and continue to fight for wilderness and wildlife preservation. This movement has strongly dissonant factions, for example, the animal rights activists and the hunters, but there is a common agenda of habitat preservation and protection of natural resources.
The second major social movement which makes up the larger environmental movement can find its origins in Rachel Carson and the public health movement which confronts toxic chemicals and other industrial byproducts as a human health hazard. As toxics are and always have been disproportionately dumped on poor and powerless people, this movement has joined forces with a broader social justice movement and is often characterized as the environmental justice movement.
As we near the end of the twentieth century, the commonalities between these two environmental movements are becoming clearer and clearer. It is hard to ignore the glaring reality that the byproducts of industrialization, from toxics to nuclear waste, to greenhouse gasses, to the ozone hole, are as much a threat to wildlife, forests and oceans as they are to human life. However the very real difference in social and political power and wealth of the people involved in the two movements create a very different sense of how political change is effectuated and what strategies are effective.
The more important reality, however, is that the vast majority of the American and global public do not consider themselves part of the environmental movement or any other movement for that matter. This is a historical period of frightening political atomization and turmoil brought about by fear, economic fear and fear of chaos. There are very few who believe that everything is well in the world, and there are even fewer who are optimistic about the future. The aftermath of the end of the Cold War and the pieties of UNCED was not a redirection of resources toward peaceful development of ecologically sustainable economies. To the contrary we have seen nothing but backlash against those who are seeking "a third way."
The drive toward global corporate monoculture is contrasted daily with growing fundamentalism and xenophobia worldwide. Corporate interests are pandering to these fears by coupling their attack on environmental regulation as harmful to the economy with an utterly irrational attack on immigrants and poor countries as causing the environmental crisis. While knowing that the US and other rich countries of the North are consuming far more than their share of the world's resources, the majority of people in the US also know that their quality of life is worse than it was two or three decades ago. They know we are on the wrong path, but they do not know where the right path is much less where it leads. People in the US and worldwide are looking for leadership and vision. What they find instead in political parties and governments is cowardice and short sightedness. Corporate control of the political system, nationally and internationally, is a growing phenomenon, breeding cynicism and contempt for the political process.
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