Our Common Future or First Along the River

Our Common Future: World Commission on Environment and Development

Author: Oxford University Press Staff

In 1983, the U.N. General Assembly created the World Commission on Environment and Development, an independent committee of twenty-two members, headed by Gro Harlem Brundtland, the Prime Minister of Norway. Designed to examine global environment and development to the year 2000 and beyond, the commission seeks to reassess critical problems, to formulate realistic proposals for solving them, and to raise the level of understanding and commitment to the issues of environment and development.
Rather than presenting a gloom and doom report about the destruction of natural resources, Our Common Future offers an agenda advocating the growth of economies based on policies that do not harm, and can even enhance, the environment. The commission recognizes that the time has come for a marriage of economy and ecology, in order to ensure the growth of human progress through development without bankrupting the resources of future generations.

Book review: Library Anns Cook Book or Cooking with Grains

First Along the River: A Brief History of the U.S. Environmental Movement

Author: Benjamin Klin

First Along the River is the premier text that introduces students to the U.S. environmental movement. Concise, accessible, and informative, this third edition has been updated to include a new chapter addressing environmental issues in the post 9/11 world, policy shifts under the Bush administration, climate change, and the future of environmental movements.

Table of Contents:

Preface     vii
Introduction     1
Philosophical Foundations     3
Biblical Justification for Dominating Nature     3
Seeking New Land     5
Rational Nature of the World     8
Social and Political Thought in the Eighteenth Century     10
Conclusion     12
The 1400s through the 1700s: Inhabiting a New Land     13
Native Americans as Prototypical Environmentalists     14
Early Colonial Environmental Attitudes     17
Conclusion     21
The Early 1800s: Destroying the Frontier     23
Manifest Destiny     24
Domesticating the Wilderness     26
Final Conquest of the West     29
Renewed Interest in Nature     31
Conclusion     35
The Late 1880s: Building an Industrial Nation     37
Population Growth and Consumerism     37
Devastating the Land     40
Overconsumption of Natural Resources     42
Voices for Nature     46
Conclusion     49
The 1900s through the 1930s: Beginnings of the Conservation Movement     51
Conversation during the Progressive Era     52
Environmental Decay duringthe Roaring Twenties     60
Conversation Policies under Roosevelt's New Deal     64
Conclusion     67
The 1940s through the 1960s: Prelude to the Green Decade     70
Environmental Costs of Scientific Progress in the 1940s     70
The Conservative 1950s     72
Emerging Voices in the 1960s     73
The Environmental Movement Begins to Mobilize     77
Conclusion     82
The 1970s: The Conservation Movement Matures     84
Mainstream and Alternative Environmental Groups     84
New Environmental Legislation     92
Jimmy Carter and the Envirocrats     96
Conclusion     99
The 1980s: A Conservative Backlash     101
Ronald Reagan's Environmental Deregulation     101
George Bush as the Environmental President     104
Employment versus the Environment     107
Environmental Groups Actions and Reactions     109
International Environmental Concern     110
Conclusion     114
The Early 1990s: Government Retrenchment and Public Apathy     116
Environmental Optimism under Bill Clinton     116
A Growing Countermovement     118
A Green Revival      120
A Conservative Resurgence     125
Conclusion     131
The Late 1990s: The Institutionalization of the Environmental Movement     133
Clinton's Moderate Environmental Approach     133
Growing Public Concern     138
New Activism     141
Congressional Action and Inaction     144
The Global Future of the Environmental Movement     149
Conclusion     152
The Environmental Movement in the Post 9/11 World     155
The Presidential Election of 2000     155
The Post 9/11 World     159
Bush and Changing Regulations     163
The Debate and the Gamble     164
Conclusion     167
Conclusion     169
Glossary     174
Bibliography and Suggested Readings     188
Index     193