Page 50 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

green or environmental movements 869

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
(Montana Representative Jeannette Rankin, the first woman
elected to Congress) • Jeannette Rankin (1880–1973)

Environmental movements won legislative victories in couver Island. Police arrested 932 protesters, who were
a number of nations, creating laws to curb air and water convicted and fined from $250 to $3,000 for defying a
pollution and to protect wilderness and endangered court injunction banning demonstrations. An eventual
species. Most nations established governmental envi- agreement, however, won protection for a large portion
ronmental agencies. In the United States the National of the forests. Nonetheless, clearcutting continued out-
Environmental Policy Act of 1969 required governmen- side the protected areas by the Weyerhauser Company,
tal agencies and businesses to subject development plans MacMillan Blodel’s successor, and was confronted by
to environmental review. new environmental protests.
Environmentalist political movements, which often One of the most famous environmental protests was
emerged in the form of “Green” parties, appeared in Eur- the Chipko movement, which began near Himalayan vil-
ope and elsewhere beginning during the 1970s.The Ger- lages in north India in March 1973 when peasants
man party,“Die Grünen” (“The Greens”), adopted a plat- stopped loggers from cutting down trees by threatening
form emphasizing environmental values, antinuclear to hug (chipko) the trees and place their bodies in the
activism, economic rights for workers, and participatory path of the axes—civil disobedience inspired by the
democracy, gaining support from groups other than envi- nonviolent methods of Indian nationalist Mohandas
ronmentalists and winning enough representation in Gandhi.The trees were valuable to villagers for fuel, fod-
Parliament to wield a critical margin between left and der, small timber, and protection against flooding. Many
right and to participate in coalition governments. Similar demonstrators were women, who are the wood gather-
parties in other European countries generally polled ers there. Similar protests occurred elsewhere in India
under 10 percent of the vote. In the United States the and met with some success. In Malaysia the Penan peo-
Green Party received national attention during the pres- ple of Sarawak carried out a series of direct actions,
idential election of 2000 when its candidate, the con- including blocking roads, to protest the destruction of
sumer advocate Ralph Nader, may have garnered enough their rainforest homeland by commercial loggers.
popular votes in some states to deprive Democratic can- Those people who have demonstrated concern for the
didate Al Gore, a moderate environmentalist and the relationship of humans to nature have often suffered for
author of the book, Earth in the Balance, of the electoral that concern. Wangari Maathai, who began the Green
margin he needed for victory against George W. Bush. Belt Movement in Kenya to enable the planting and car-
Elements of environmental movements did not con- ing for trees by women and children, was beaten and
tent themselves with seeking reform in governmental imprisoned. Judi Bari, a leader of the 1990 “Redwood
actions or international agreements, which seemed to Summer” protests against logging of giant redwood trees
them to be slow and inadequate.The Environmental Jus- in California, was maimed by a bomb placed under her
tice Movement organized protests reacting to the fact car seat. Chico Mendes, who organized the seringueiros
that many environmental hazards, such as toxic waste (rubber tappers in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil) to
dumps and polluting industries, were located in neigh- defend the forest and their livelihood against illegal
borhoods inhabited by the poor and racial minorities. clearing, was murdered in 1988 by the agents of rich
Protesters took direct action against environmentally landowners whose financial interests in forest removal he
damaging actions such as the clear-cutting of ancient threatened.The poet and playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa was
forests. In 1993, for example, Canadian citizens blocked executed by the dictatorship of Nigeria in 1995 for
roads being used by logging trucks of the MacMillan organizing a movement against oil drilling that pro-
Bloedel Company to carry huge old-growth trees cut duced air and water pollution in the lands of his Ogoni
from the forests surrounding Clayoquot Sound on Van- tribe without compensation.