Environmental Studies: Movements and Environmentalists

A movement or theory that applies feminist principles and ideas to ecological issues.

Movement to protect the quality and continuity of life through conservation of natural resources, prevention of pollution, and control of land use.

Any of the political parties established in various countries to oppose the destructive environmental effects of many modern technologies and the economic systems and institutions that drive them.

International protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that was agreed at Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997.

The process of recovering and reusing waste products—from household use, manufacturing, agriculture, and business—and thereby reducing their burden on the environment.

From International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics
Often associated with religious and agricultural views and practices, stewardship covers a diverse range of related positions in regard to how humans ought to value and treat the environment.

Sustainable development is the promotion of developmental patterns that will enable current human generations to meet their needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

From Encyclopedia of Geography
As a concept and a field of study, urban sustainability emerged out of the sustainable development movement that took off in 1987 with the publication of the Brundtland report, Our Common Future.

From International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics
The first law to bear the name ‘Clean Air Act’ was passed by the US Congress in 1963; there were additional laws passed in 1965 and 1967.

From International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics
In 1972, the US Congress rewrote water pollution law by passing the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, which became known as the ‘Clean Water Act’ (CWA).

From Culture Wars: An Encyclopedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices
The Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973 is comprehensive federal legislation designed to protect all species in the United States designated as endangered by protecting habitats critical to their survival.

Agency established to safeguard the environment. Congress officially brought the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) into existence in 1970, but its roots go back as far as 1962.

From International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969 became a ‘cornerstone’ of modern environmental law in the USA.

From International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics
Edward Abbey, a distinguished writer of books and articles on nature and the environment, is unique as one who refused to consider himself an environmentalist, even though virtually all of his published work shows a love of wild places.

American photographer, b. San Francisco. He began taking photographs in the High Sierra and Yosemite Valley, with which his name is permanently associated, becoming professional in 1930.

Naturalist and broadcaster, born in London, UK, the brother of Richard Attenborough.

British botanist, writer, and broadcaster.

From American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present
Wendell Berry has carefully tended a farm in north-central Kentucky that his family has tilled since 1803, while simultaneously conducting a formidable literary and academic career.

From American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present
David Brower, proclaimed “archdruid” of conservation by his biographer, John McPhee, was perhaps the most famous environmentalist of the twentieth-century United States.

American environmentalist and writer whose best-known work, Silent Spring (1962), condemns the use of pesticides hazardous to wildlife.

From American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present
Dubos was disturbed by wanton environmental destruction and in the early 1960s became an outspoken advocate for the nascent environmental movement of that time.

US Democratic politician and environmentalist, vice-president 1993-2001.

From American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present
The director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York since 1981, and an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute since 1985, James Hansen is a climatologist known as the Paul Revere of global warming.

US conservationist and ecologist.

From Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change
James Lovelock is an inventor and independent scientist. In the 1950s Lovelock carried out pioneering work on the detection of trace gases.

From Contemporary World Issues: Renewable and Alternative Energy Resources: A Reference Handbook
Amory Lovins, a well-known American environmentalist and renewable energy advocate, has been called by Newsweek one of the most influential energy thinkers in the Western world.

From American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present
Marsh was an avid student of the land, especially how human activity altered it.

From International Encyclopedia of Environmental Politics
The short life of Francisco ‘Chico’ Alves Mendes Filho was devoted to leading the Brazilian rubber tappers’ fight to defend the Amazon Forest against exploitation by powerful and wealthy land speculators and ranchers.

Explorer, naturalist, and conservationist, born in Dunbar, East Lothian, E Scotland, UK.

From Encyclopedia of the U.S. Government and the Environment: History, Policy, and Politics
Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, was a Democratic governor and a three-term senator from Wisconsin before becoming counselor to the Wilderness Society, where he worked until his death at age 89 in 2005.

From Encyclopedia of Environment and Society
E. F. Schumacher is best known for his book Small is Beautiful, which argued for social and environmental sustainability as a radical critique of mass industrialization, the culture of consumerism, and the logic of globalization.

US naturalist and author; his experiment in living in solitude recorded in Walden (1854), his thoughts on the individual in society in Civil Disobedience (1849).

From American Environmental Leaders: From Colonial Times to the Present
Paul Watson is best known for his direct actions at sea in the defense of seals, dolphins, whales, and other marine wildlife. From the late 1960s, Watson actively campaigned to prevent nuclear testing, to disrupt Canadian seal hunts, and to damage or sink vessels engaged in illegal whaling activities.

From Scientific Exploration and Expeditions: From the Age of Discovery to the Twenty-First Century
French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau gained fame for his many books and documentaries dedicated to his undersea explorations, including those made from his base ship, the Calypso. But Cousteau did more than produce popular works. He developed a self-contained underwater breathing apparatus, showed that human beings could live underwater for extended periods of time, and exposed the threat of pollution to the oceans.