Environmentalism

In the context of all the social movements we’ve considered, modern American environmentalism shares two unusual characteristics with the animal advocacy movement: a need for allies to speak on behalf of those who lack political power of their own (ecosystems, farmed animals) and a strong focus on consumer change (recycling, veganism). These common features make environmentalism a particularly promising case study for understanding the most effective ways to help animals.

This case study focuses on three iconic strategies of the modern American environmental movement. The first two, the release of the book Silent Spring and the establishment of Earth Day, were seminal events that seemed to launch environmentalism into mainstream discourse in under a decade. Their apparent success is all the more remarkable given the extra challenge that ally-based movements seem to face in gaining legitimacy and support. The third focus of this case study, recycling, is one of the few historical examples of a strong movement focus on consumer behavior. The magnitude of behavior change was impressive: 96% of Americans now recycle at least some of the time,¹ but it’s unclear whether this strategy was a cost-effective way of realizing the movement’s goals. Further research could help resolve this uncertainty.

We think our analysis of these events suggests that animal advocates should put more weight on the following claims, although of course more research is needed and this analysis should be weighted with other available evidence.

• The moral licensing effect is a significant concern and should make us skeptical of encouraging people to take small actions for a cause.
• Scientific credibility makes public and political leaders substantially more receptive.
• Books and large public events can be highly impactful, at least when they have the right timing and sufficient credibility.
• Inspiring a sense of urgency is key to provoking discussion and inspiring meaningful change.
• Broad coalitions increase participation and show the public that there is diverse support for a proposed change.
• Relatively moderate and mainstream strategies can succeed despite the inevitable criticism from more radical flanks of the movement.

Table of Contents

• • Silent Spring
    • Introduction
    • Silent Spring in the United States
    • Silent Spring in Europe
    • Effectiveness
    • Lessons for the animal movement
      • Books as an effective intervention
      • Timing
      • Urgency
      • Publicity
      • Credibility
  • Earth Day
    • Introduction
    • History
    • Effectiveness
    • Lessons for the animal movement
      • Event organizing strategy
      • Coalition building
      • Publicity
      • Radical techniques
  • Recycling
    • History
    • Effectiveness
    • Lessons for the animal movement
      • Consumer action
      • Moral licensing effect

SILENT SPRING

Introduction

Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring is widely credited with triggering the modern American environmental movement.^{2, 3, 4} In it, Carson profiled six pesticides and their harmful impacts on wildlife and human health. This case study examines the book’s impact by using its different effects in the U.S. and various European countries as a natural experiment to try and determine the factors responsible for its successes and failures.

Silent Spring in the United States

Silent Spring generated a national conversation on the use and regulation of pesticides. The book reached a wide audience, selling 40,000 copies in advance sales⁵ and over two million copies to date.⁶ It quickly reached the best-seller list and stayed there for 31 months.⁷ It was translated into seven languages within the first year of its publication, and has been translated into eleven more since.⁸ Random House Publishers listed it fifth among the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Twentieth Century.⁹

Political leaders also took notice of Silent Spring. Partially in response to industry critiques of the book, President John F. Kennedy commissioned a review of its claims. The President’s Scientific Advisory Committee determined the book’s claims to be generally correct.^{10, 11, 12} Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall supported the book, invited Carson to speak before influential members of society, and echoed many of her themes in his own 1963 book The Quiet Crisis.¹³

Silent Spring benefited from the contemporary political climate and recent events that made people more receptive to its message. The U.S. had been enjoying postwar posterity for over a decade, and critiques of modernity were mounting.¹⁴ Carson’s warnings about the dangers of unchecked scientific advancement fit this trend.¹⁵ Carson made her case that unseen human alterations to the environment could pose grave health threats by explicitly appealing to the alarm over nuclear radiation, the effects of which were well known.^{16, 17} She also referred to the cranberry food scare of 1959, when berries were tainted with dangerous levels of herbicide.¹⁸ Coincidentally, mere months before Silent Spring was released, news broke that thalidomide, a medicine widely used in Europe to treat morning sickness, caused horrific birth defects.¹⁹ The FDA physician responsible for blocking its entry to the U.S. market was lauded as a heroine and honored by the President.^{20, 21} All these events helped prime the American public for Carson’s message.

Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Nixon all took up environmentalist rhetoric.²² Yet the first major policy victory after Silent Spring’s publication did not come until 1970, with the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Following criticism that his Environmental Quality Council was insufficient, Nixon had commissioned the Ash Council to study the need for a separate federal agency to oversee environmental policy.²³ In explaining why such an agency was required, the Council listed pesticides among the major components of the nation’s “Environmental Crisis,” along with air pollution, water pollution, solid waste, and natural resource depletion.²⁴ Carson’s research into the broad ecological effects of pesticides may also have helped inspire the Ash Council’s call for an independent agency that could “trace [pollutants] through the entire ecological chain.”²⁵

In 1972, the EPA banned the general use of DDT,²⁶ the main toxin discussed in Silent Spring.²⁷ During the congressional hearing that led to the ban, biologists presented new evidence that DDT was causing eggshell thinning and plummeting populations in birds of prey.²⁸ When the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976 expanded the EPA’s power to regulate pesticides, it banned or severely restricted the remaining five toxins profiled in the book.²⁹

In addition to changing policy, Silent Spring is credited with changing attitudes and igniting the modern American environmental movement.^{30, 31} Its popularity contributed to the success of the first Earth Day in 1970, in which more than 20 million Americans participated in rallies.³² It even infiltrated popular culture: Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song “Big Yellow Taxi” includes a verse imploring a farmer to “put away that DDT now.”^{33, 34}Environmental historian Mark Stoll has documented a total of 14 songs named “Silent Spring,” from rock to classical, written between 1963 and 2012.³⁵

Silent Spring in Europe

Silent Spring was quickly translated and widely read in many European countries, but it had varying success there.³⁶ This resembles a natural experiment through which one can examine the factors responsible for translating the book’s popularity into impact. Although different in many ways, the countries share enough commonalities in culture, governance, and degree of industrialization to make comparisons relevant.

Historian Mark Stoll suggests that, in general, Europe was less receptive to the book’s anti-modernist message because it had not enjoyed post-war prosperity as long as the U.S. had.³⁷ People were still grateful for the economic recovery, and had not yet begun to criticize it.³⁸ Yet it was also the case that pesticide use was not as intense in most of Europe as it was in the U.S., in part because of its economic situation.³⁹

In Germany, anti-modernism and conservation were associated with the fallen political right.⁴⁰ The book would be “rediscovered” when the political left incorporated environmentalism into their 1969 Presidential campaign platform.⁴¹ Chancellor Willy Brandt of the majority Social Democratic Party established a federal environmental program in 1971,⁴² but German environmentalism did not reach full swing until the acid rain and nuclear scares of the 1980s.⁴³

In Britain and France, the presence of existing pesticide regulation temporarily limited the impact of Silent Spring, because opposition groups successfully argued that the existing systems were sufficient.⁴⁴ Britain had three measures in place: the Agricultural (Poisonous Substances) Act of 1952 (passed to protect farm workers after eight died from herbicide), a requirement that chemical companies voluntarily report potentially harmful new products, and a 1960 restriction on the timing of planting using insecticide-treated seed (passed after such seed caused game bird die-offs, prompting public health concerns).⁴⁵ After extensive debate in the House of Lords, officials decided there was no need for immediate legislative action. Britain eventually restricted many pesticides in 1985, largely in response to the fall of bird of prey populations due to DDT in their food supply.⁴⁶

France’s pesticide registration system was established in the 1940s to ensure consistent manufacturing and accurate labeling of chemical compounds.⁴⁷ It was overseen by the Ministry of Agriculture and primarily pursued agricultural efficiency.⁴⁸ When Silent Spring raised concerns over pesticides, calls for change lost their steam when renowned toxicologist René Truhaut claimed the system was sufficient to protect public health.⁴⁹ France overhauled its registration system in 1972 to require stronger investigation into the health threats posed by new products, but it did not ban DDT until the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2002.^{50, 51}

The timing of related events also seems to have been an important factor in how Silent Spring was received. It had the biggest impact in Sweden, where the popular ornithologist Erik Rosenberg had already raised concerns over the poisoning of birds by pesticides.⁵² At the same time, environmental activist Nils Dahlbeck was spreading awareness of mercury contamination in lakes, and although Silent Spring did not mention mercury, the public saw it as part of a common fight against the dangers of pollution. In 1969 Sweden became the first country to ban DDT.⁵³ Silent Spring’s cultural impact is evident in the Swedish use of “biocide” in the place of “insecticide.”⁵⁴ Finland is the only other country where Carson’s preferred term has become so popular.⁵⁵

Other countries seem not to have acted on pesticides until they saw their own environmental crises. Raptor die-offs provoked action in Netherlands in the 1960s and Britain in the 1980s.⁵⁶ The German environmental movement hit full stride in the 1980s in response to a series of dramatic events: the apparent death of forests from acid rain, a chemical spill that turned the Rhine red, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.^{57, 58, 59}

Effectiveness

The readiness of the political and cultural environment in 1962 raises the question of whether, if Carson had not raised the alarm, another author might have had the same effect—or whether the same policy changes would have been made without any single person calling for them. In other words, was Silent Spring truly influential, or was it simply riding an inevitable tide of social change? Overall, the evidence suggests Carson was plausibly responsible for advancing pesticide regulation and the birth of the modern American environmental movement by about one to ten years.

Replaceability by other authors

There are good reasons to believe that Silent Spring did, in fact, incite change even considering the counterfactual. In the period between World War II and Silent Spring, most of the best-read environmental books—Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold, 1949; The Windward Road: Adventures of a Naturalist on Remote Caribbean Shores, Archie Carr, 1956; The Everglades: River of Grass, Marjory Stoneham Douglas, 1947—focused on traditional themes of natural history and conservationism.⁶⁰ Others—Our Plundered Planet, Fairfield Osborn, 1948; Road to Survival, William Vogt, 1948—raised apocalyptic fears about overpopulation.⁶¹ Silent Spring was unusual in its rigorous research of an environmental threat posed by specific technologies and practices. If other authors were writing more similar books to Silent Spring, that would suggest the book had a smaller impact.

In fact, initially reluctant to take on such a politically charged subject, Carson had tried to get other writers to pick up the story—but had no success.^{62, 63} However, unbeknownst to Carson, Murray Bookchin was working on a similar book, Our Synthetic Environment, which was published just five days before Silent Spring made its debut as a New Yorker serial.^{64, 65} Like Silent Spring, it discussed the dangers of pesticides, including DDT, and the importance of the environment to human health.^{66, 67} It also covered other environmental health problems, e.g. air pollution and radiation,⁶⁸ and contained an explicit critique of the social and economic structures Murray believed created these problems.⁶⁹ Our Synthetic Environment was quickly eclipsed by Silent Spring.^{70, 71} Even if Carson’s book had never appeared on the national stage, the political radicalism of Bookchin—a self-described anarchist—might have kept his book from having a similar impact.⁷²

Silent Spring drew on existing research, but there were few people who could have made use of it as well as Carson did. Carson was a respected science journalist and a well-known author, having already published three best-selling books on ocean life.^{73, 74} She had the literary skills necessary to start a national conversation over complicated questions of chemistry and ecology. Her existing reader base helped give her latest book a quick start. Thanks to her political moderatism and the apoliticism of her ocean books,⁷⁵ Carson was well-situated to face the aggressive industry backlash to her books. This suggests that Silent Spring’s impact would not have been replaced by other authors, at least for the next few years.

Replaceability by other events for the U.S. DDT ban and other pesticide regulations

It is possible that, even in the absence of a book like Silent Spring, environmental crises would have provoked action on pesticide regulation and the other issues the book might have impacted. Although Carson was one of the first people to sound the alarm on DDT, the ban was more immediately preceded by research in the late 60s and early 70s demonstrating the connection between DDT and eggshell thinning.⁷⁶ Biologists presented this evidence in the congressional hearing that led to the ban on DDT, explaining the dire consequences for charismatic species such as the brown pelican and the peregrine falcon.⁷⁷ Britain and the Netherlands also tightened their pesticide regulations in response to raptor die-offs.⁷⁸

If the U.S. DDT ban and other pesticide regulations were more of a response to raptor declines than to Silent Spring, as the chronology suggests, then the same effect might have been achieved with or without the book. On the other hand, Carson may have enabled this relatively quick legislative response to the new research by popularizing concern over pesticides and defending its scientific credibility. She may even have accelerated the discovery of the connection between DDT and raptor declines, although David Peakall does not mention her anywhere in his brief history of the scientific response to peregrine falcon declines.⁷⁹

There seems to be a fairly high probability that domestic pesticide regulation could have been enacted without Silent Spring, and that this could have happened around the same time it actually did. However, while raptor die-offs alone may have provoked a comparable legislative response, it is harder to imagine them garnering wide enough attention that they could catalyze the environmental movement in the same way.

Range of impact

The largest estimate of the impact of Silent Spring might be that it was the primary cause of (1) U.S. legislation banning or severely restricting the six chemicals it discusses, (2) several pieces of international legislation and institutional reform including the Swedish ban on DDT, (3) the modern American environmental movement, which supported the passing of landmark environmental legislation in the 1960s, including the Clean Air and Water Acts, the Endangered Species Act, and the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency, and (4) the worldwide ban of DDT for agricultural use, starting in 2004.⁸⁰

The lowest estimate of Silent Spring’s impact might be that its unique impact was negligible. Perhaps another author would have inspired a similar movement, and/or environmental crises would have stimulated the same political reforms. People would have eventually taken similar actions in response to environmental crises like those that incited environmental action in Britain, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Nonetheless, Carson was an exceptional writer and her book is uniquely celebrated by American environmentalists. Its relatively early timing also helped frame later discoveries. Therefore, a plausible but conservative estimate of Carson’s impact should credit her with jump-starting pesticide legislation (and the American environmental movement more broadly) by about one to ten years, rather than being its only possible creator.

Lessons for the Animal Movement

Books as an effective intervention

By writing Silent Spring, Rachel Carson seemed to have a very large impact—major national legislation implemented years earlier than it would have been otherwise—with relatively little effort: one person working for four years.⁸¹ However, only a tiny percentage of books are as successful as Silent Spring. They have to be well-written, well-timed, well-publicized, and scientifically credible (see below).

Books written on similar themes at similar times may be redundant. One may crowd out another, as might have happened with Silent Spring and the lesser-known Our Synthetic Environment by Murray Bookchin. Alternatively, books on similar themes could compound each other’s effect on public perception, as was the case for Silent Spring and Before Nature Dies by Jean Dorst in France.⁸² Crowding out seems less likely when both authors are well-respected and strong writers: Dorst was a renowned environmentalist who served as Director of the French National Museum of Natural History,⁸³ whereas Bookchin was an anarchist and a first-time author.⁸⁴
Book-writing seems to be a high-risk, high reward intervention in terms of direct impact—although books that don’t contribute as much to national dialogue can still be useful for recruiting or educating advocates, building author platforms that can be helpful for future projects, and/or having impact in other ways. Previous literary accomplishments seem to be the best way of being sure that an author can have a larger direct impact with her or his book, but some of the most influential books in both the environmental movement, e.g. The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich, 1968, and the animal movement, e.g. Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, 1975 have come from relatively unknown authors.^{85, 86} Other factors that affect a book’s success are discussed below.

Timing

Differences in political climates and contemporary events appear to be key factors responsible for the range of responses to Silent Spring in different countries. The book had a greater impact on attitudes and policies when it coincided with other contamination concerns: nuclear radiation and thalidomide in the U.S. and mercury in Sweden. In Germany, it came at a time when its message of modernism was the political domain of the failing right wing. In Britain, it came a decade after fears about game bird poisoning had been raised and addressed, and two decades before fears about declines in raptor populations.

Animal advocates may try to target their effort to politically favorable times. In particular they should look for events that can be framed as national crises, such as livestock disease outbreaks or other similar events, and directly tie them to their mission.

Urgency

In the U.S., Carson successfully created a sense of urgency around her issue in part because pesticide use was blatant—e.g. aerial spraying of private lands by the federal government—and unregulated. In France and Britain, less flagrant overuse and the existence of weak regulation undermined this sense of urgency, delaying action.

In the animal movement, there is often debate over the utility of incremental change. For example, should we focus on improving living conditions for animals in factory farms or should we simply focus on ending factory farming? If one believes that U.S. pesticide regulation “leapfrogged” that of France and Britain, the examples above could be interpreted as evidence that incremental change can stall long-term change.

Publicity

Silent Spring received publicity of nearly every form, increasing the public understanding of its messages. Sections of it appeared in a three-part serialization in the New Yorker. Carson repeated her message in an hour-long episode of CBS Reports, a respected television news show.⁸⁷ The book also made its way into the homes of about 150,000 subscribers to the Book Of The Month Club, which selected it for its October mailing.^{88, 89, 90}

Similarly, the book was highly impactful in Sweden, where it was supported by a leading ornithologist and an environmental activist. Public figures also made it a subject of national conversation in France. Roger Heim, Director of France’s National Museum of Natural History and President of the French Academy of Sciences, wrote the preface to the French edition and spread Carson’s message with an article in the daily newspaper Le Figaro.^{91, 92} Prominent French environmentalist Jean Dorst reinforced the themes of Silent Spring with his 1965 book Avant que nature meure (Before Nature Dies).⁹³ Though not as widely read in Britain, it was thoroughly debated in government after Lord Shackleton wrote the preface to the British edition and the Duke of Edinburgh distributed advance copies.⁹⁴

While the publicity certainly helped Silent Spring in each case, it does not fully explain the different responses of these countries—Sweden banned DDT in 1969, Britain in 1985–86, and France not until the worldwide ban in 2004.⁹⁵ While publicity may be a necessary factor in effecting policy change, society also needs to have the political and cultural environment to facilitate that change. It could also be the case that almost all of this publicity was a consequence of the book’s impact, rather than the cause of it.

An interesting and sad note is that Carson died of breast cancer two years after finishing Silent Spring.^{96, 97} It is possible that the book—and Carson herself—could have had a larger or more immediate impact if she had lived to continue promoting it.

Credibility

Rachel Carson came under heavy attack from the pesticide industry. In defending herself, she benefited greatly from the support of the President’s Science Advisory Committee (PSAC), which validated her book’s scientific credibility. Even Carson’s colleague in the Netherlands, who faced pressure for helping with one of the book’s chapters, said that the attacks on him decreased when the PSAC issued its report.⁹⁸

Credibility can cut both ways. The participation of academic toxicologists in the French pesticide regulatory system made it trustworthy in the eyes of the public, despite the fact that the system was better designed to enforce purity standards than to serve public health.⁹⁹

The animal movement probably faces even more industry opposition than Carson did, given the size and political strength of animal agriculture.¹⁰⁰ This suggests that animal advocates should aggressively seek out the endorsement of independent scientific authorities, especially those within government and academia, as well as other authority figures.

EARTH DAY

Introduction

Like Silent Spring, the first Earth Day (April 22, 1970) is widely cited as a major catalyst of the modern American environmental movement. The day consisted of simultaneous events in schools and communities nationwide, all with the theme of calling for action to curb pollution and preserve natural resources. By tapping into public concern for the environment stoked by recent disasters such as the Santa Barbara oil spill, the day expressed a popular mandate for political action on the environment, facilitating the passage of major environmental legislation such as the Clean Water Act of 1972.^{101, 102}

History

Origin

Before founding Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson’s two terms as governor of Wisconsin (1958-1962) were defined by his commitment to conservation, including an overhaul of natural resources management and the establishment of a wildlands protection program.¹⁰³

After his election to the Senate in 1962,¹⁰⁴ Nelson sought to “put the environment into the political ‘limelight’ once and for all.”¹⁰⁵)He successfully convinced President John F. Kennedy to go on an 11-state “conservation tour.”¹⁰⁶ But between the President’s weak messaging and the poor timing of the tour (the press was distracted by the recent Partial Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union), it was a failure by Nelson’s own admission.^{107, 108} Nelson also met frustration after not a single congressperson signed onto his proposal to ban DDT.¹⁰⁹

In 1969, after seeing the destruction wrought by the Santa Barbara oil spill, Nelson again felt the need for an event to put the environment on the national stage.¹¹⁰ Impressed by the movement-building power of student-led anti-Vietnam War protests, he decided to adopt their tactic of coordinated grassroots demonstrations.¹¹¹ His September announcement of the plan for a “nationwide environmental ‘teach-in’” was reported by the Associated Press and reprinted in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and other publications across the country.^{112, 113, 114}

Planning

Nelson decided that Earth Day should be a decentralized, grassroots effort, with each interested community celebrating “in any way they want.”¹¹⁵ Although he expected college students to play a large role, as they had in anti-war protests, he wanted to be sure events were not confined to campuses.¹¹⁶

Nelson initially dedicated two staffers to the project, but it quickly grew larger than they could handle, so he set up a nonprofit dedicated to organizing the event, called Environment Teach-In, Inc.^{117, 118} Nelson staffed it strategically, with Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey as his co-chair and former Stanford student President Denis Hayes as the national coordinator.^{119, 120} Hayes assembled a team of young activists to help him fundraise, meet with the press, develop educational materials on the environment, and publicize communities’ plans for their events.¹²¹

Earth Day

The first Earth Day was held on April 22nd, 1970. It was timed to fall between spring break and final exams, maximizing the number of college students who would participate.¹²² Indeed, two thousand colleges and universities took part. Yet to Nelson’s surprise, elementary and high schools played an even larger role, with ten thousand participating in Earth Day. The organizers estimated that 20 million people showed up nationwide, or about 10% of the U.S. population.¹²³ To allow its members to address their constituents, Congress went into recess for the day.¹²⁴

Earth Day events took various forms, including marches, festivals, educational programs, and political theatre.¹²⁵ In New York City, Fifth Avenue was filled with 100,000 people and Union Square became a carnival ground.¹²⁶ The events often extended across several days, with some cities even declaring an “Earth Week.”^{127, 128, 129} Common to all events were the speeches on April 22nd, many of which were based on text supplied by Environment Teach-In, Inc.^{130, 131}

Effectiveness

Aftermath

Public support for the environmental movement increased dramatically after the first Earth Day. According to one poll, while only 1% of Americans believed protecting the environment was an important goal the year before Earth Day, a year after Earth Day the number had grown to 25%.¹³² Another poll found that between 1965 and 1970, the percentage of citizens for whom cleaning up air and water was one of their top three political priorities increased from 17% to 53%.¹³³

Earth Day also marked a change in the focus and character of the environmental movement. Throughout most of American history, environmentalists were primarily concerned with the conservation of wild spaces, wildlife, and natural resources.¹³⁴ By encouraging participating communities (80% of which were urban) to speak and act on the issues that affected them most, Earth Day contributed to expanding the scope of American environmentalism to include the urban environment.¹³⁵ “Environment is all of America and its problems,” Nelson said in his Earth Day address. “It is rats in the ghetto. It is a hungry child in a land of affluence. It is housing that is not worthy of the name; neighborhoods not fit to inhabit.”¹³⁶ Meanwhile, on the ground in Philadelphia, a mother led a bus tour to draw attention to the factories near her home and the air pollution they created.¹³⁷

Nelson originally conceived of Earth Day not just as a means to educate the masses (many of whom, he felt, were already asking for action), but as a means to motivate political dialogue.¹³⁸ In this respect, he also appears to have been successful. Nelson proposed a resolution later that year to establish an annual “Earth Week” encouraging environmental education, which received co-sponsorship from half of the Senate.¹³⁹ The 28 pieces of federal legislation in the “Environmental Decade” to follow built the foundation of American environmental law.¹⁴⁰ These included the Clean Water Act of 1972,¹⁴¹ the Endangered Species Act of 1973,¹⁴² and the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976.¹⁴³

Earth Day continues to be celebrated across the globe each year. According to the Earth Day Action Network, it is the largest civic observance in the world, with 1 billion people participating annually.¹⁴⁴

Confounding variables, counterfactuals, and replaceability
Earth Day coincided with several major national events that confound analysis of its impact. In January 1969, an oil spill erupted off the coast of Santa Barbara, California.¹⁴⁵ Images of the damage wrought by the 3 million gallons (11 million liters) of crude oil filled the news for weeks.¹⁴⁶ Then, in June, an oil slick on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire, further stoking the national concern over water pollution.¹⁴⁷ Earth Day did not create a sense of urgency on environmental issues so much as it tapped into an existing sentiment.¹⁴⁸ Nelson wrote later that “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level . . . It organized itself.”¹⁴⁹ In fact, when work on Earth Day first began, similar events were already literally organizing themselves. Students at San José University, Dickinson College, and the University of Michigan already had plans for events at their colleges.¹⁵⁰

What would have happened without Earth Day? The independently organized university events may have had a similar effect of channeling the emerging environmental consciousness if they managed to get national press coverage, as anti-war demonstrations had done. However, it is hard to imagine an effect of the same order of magnitude as Earth Day, with its thousands of participating schools and cities, its months of national press before the event, and its interruption to congressional proceedings. Earth Day packed concern for the environment into a single, synchronized, maximally visible event that plausibly encouraged large amounts of participation because it provided a rallying point for environmentalists.

There is little reason to think a similar event would have occurred without Gaylord Nelson and his team, at least around the same time period. His combination of the power of grassroots action with the reach of a federal government office had no precedent in that era, if ever. Had other leaders taken on the issue, it seems more likely they would have adopted a unilateral approach similar to Kennedy’s 1963 conservation tour, because it would be easier to organize and a more traditional action for politicians to take. A similar tour repeated around 1970 would likely have reached an audience better primed for its message, but without grassroots support there is no guarantee it would command the media attention Earth Day generated.

The counterfactual that most detracts from the apparent impact of Earth Day is President Nixon’s establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on January 1, 1970, authorized by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969. Attributing the legislative victories of the “Environmental Decade” entirely to Earth Day would neglect the fact that such sweeping federal laws were virtually impossible to enact without the authority and enforcement mechanisms established by NEPA. The fact that NEPA was passed before Earth Day also detracts from Nelson’s claim that politicians were not concerned about the environment at the time.¹⁵¹ Given the existing popular demand for environmental legislation, it seems likely that similar laws could have been passed without Earth Day. Earth Day’s effect seems to be condensing public sentiment into a clear mandate for environmental action. This could have increased the speed with which legislation was written and adopted and the reach of the laws that were adopted. By making environmentalism more mainstream and diverse, it may also have increased the long-term potential for environmental progress.

Lessons for the animal movement

Event organizing strategy

Environment Teach-In, Inc. maximized the scale of its event largely by minimizing their involvement in the planning of local events—as well as the control over their messaging. Costs were kept low by offloading as much work as possible to local actors, many of whom were volunteers or professionals shifting the focus of their work, e.g. city government officials and school teachers. Environment Teach-In, Inc. went even further, explicitly encouraging organizers to focus on local issues. This plausibly made Earth Day events more meaningful to each community where they were held.

On the other hand, Earth Day was a highly coordinated effort. Because all the events centered on one day, it managed to dominate national news. It is unlikely that the same number of events scattered over the year could have done the same. With coordination came economies of scale. The instructional materials and publicity services provided by the Washington D.C. office lowered the barriers to participation, which probably resulted in more schools and communities getting involved than if each had to design its event from scratch. Alternatively, Environmental Teach-In, Inc. could have established a program for local events at different times of the year. Yet by having everything happen at once, they were able to inspire and support thousands of separate events with only a small staff, a shoestring budget, many energized volunteers, and donated office space. Finally, the coordination of simultaneous actions across the country gave every event the sense of being a part of a larger movement.

Coalition building

Nelson directly modeled Earth Day strategy off the success of anti-war protests. National Coordinator Denis Hayes institutionalized this cross-movement approach by staffing the Washington headquarters with young activists from the anti-war and civil rights movements. This benefited the movement in three ways: (1) it brought in talented and experienced organizers who weren’t previously involved,¹⁵² (2) it helped expand the scope of the event’s messaging and therefore the number of people and organizations that could identify with it, and (3) it buffered them somewhat against the objections that were nonetheless made by other activists, who claimed it was a distraction from the more pressing issues of the day.

Publicity

As with Silent Spring, the attention of national news media outlets was key to Earth Day’s success. The involvement of a senator may have added to both the legitimacy and the novelty of this newest wave of demonstrations. On the other hand, the broad grassroots participation in the event may have commanded media attention in a way the Kennedy conservation tour failed to. Reporters resisted Kennedy’s efforts to focus on the environment by repeatedly following his speeches with questions about the recent Partial Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. On Earth Day, concern for the environment was so demonstrably widespread that it would have been hard to upstage.

Radical critiques

Deep ecologists¹⁵³ and other environmentalists sharply critiqued Earth Day as not going far enough, or even “a con game set up by the establishment to conceal even further abuses of the environment.”¹⁵⁴ These criticisms do not seem to have borne out, as the event was highly impactful and there is no apparent evidence that it distracted people from other issues.

It is always possible that the counterfactual could have been even more environmental progress and change in public sentiment, but that seems unlikely given that some felt that Earth Day was already too radical. One corporation President even declined a sponsorship invitation, in part because he suspected the involvement of “radical persons” and “militants.”¹⁵⁵ It is also possible that the debate around the goals and methods of Earth Day increased the amount or quality of news coverage, and so may have benefited it in that way.

RECYCLING

History

The first large-scale efforts to promote recycling in the United States began during World War I, when the war effort created a scarcity of raw materials. The federal government organized recycling efforts through its newly launched Waste Reclamation Service.¹⁵⁶ During the Great Depression, reducing and reusing waste became a necessity for many families, leaving a legacy of thrift long after it passed.¹⁵⁷ With World War II, recycling again became a patriotic duty.¹⁵⁸

Concern for waste was an early pillar of the modern American environmental movement. On Earth Day 1971, Keep America Beautiful launched an ad campaign featuring a solemn American Indian bearing witness to the scourge of littering. One environmental commentator called it “perhaps the best-known public service announcement ever.”¹⁵⁹ A garbage barge made national news in 1987 when it traveled thousands of miles in search of a place to dump its trash.^{160, 161} It was widely interpreted as a symbol of “the nationwide crisis we face with garbage disposal.”¹⁶² When Earth Day first went global in 1990,¹⁶³ recycling was chosen as that year’s theme.¹⁶⁴

Effectiveness

Immediate effects

The recycling movement appears to have been successful in its immediate goals: reducing environmental damage by increasing the amount of waste recycled.¹⁶⁵ The percent of solid municipal waste that Americans recycled rose from 9.3% in 1975 (one year after the introduction of the first curbside recycling program)¹⁶⁶ to 34.3% in 2013, a 3.7-fold increase.¹⁶⁷ Even more impressive is the breadth of participation: as of 2014, 76% of Americans said they recycle all or most of the time, with 96% recycling at least occasionally.¹⁶⁸ One study found that while having the option to recycle changes consumption patterns, the effect is the same regardless of green attitude.¹⁶⁹ This suggests that recycling is broadly understood by environmentalists and non-environmentalists alike.¹⁷⁰

The environmental benefits of this widespread adoption have been substantial. For example, recycling releases less carbon into the atmosphere than would disposal of that waste in a landfill. In 2013, these carbon savings amounted to taking 39 million cars¹⁷¹—about 15% of the nation’s vehicles¹⁷²—off the road for a year.¹⁷³

Broader effects

The broader effects of recycling are the subject of much speculation but little empirical study. Some hope that recycling could instill a mindset of environmental consciousness, resulting in people doing more to help the environment in other ways. The success of the movement and its institutionalization by government may also have helped to make environmentalism mainstream.

However, environmentalists worry that recycling and other “green” consumer habits (i.e. those intended to be environmentally-friendly) may have a negative effect on environmental progress through the moral licensing effect. The moral licensing effect occurs when “affirming a moral identity leads people to feel licensed to act immorally.”¹⁷⁴ Environmental activist George Monbiot argues that recycling can have such an effect, because “the small actions allow people to overlook the big ones and still believe that they are environmentally responsible.”¹⁷⁵ For similar reasons, environmental fundraiser Roger Craver said trash sorting has “done more to hurt the environmental movement than anything I can think of.”¹⁷⁶

The moral licensing effect of green behavior has been demonstrated experimentally. In one experiment, participants were asked to assess the quality of a pair of scissors by cutting paper with it. Participants who were provided with both a recycling and a trash bin used almost three times as much paper as those who only had a trash bin available.¹⁷⁷ The presence of a recycling bin also increased the amount of paper towels bathroom visitors used (though only by 16% in this case).¹⁷⁸ If recycling increases consumption more than it decreases environmental costs of production, it would have a net negative environmental impact.

Moral licensing can also operate across different domains of behavior, as demonstrated in a study that asked participants to make purchases from either a green online store or a conventional one. In subsequent experiments, the green shoppers were less altruistic and more likely to lie and steal.¹⁷⁹ While more research would be very helpful, these results suggest that moral licensing outweighs its opposing effect, moral consistency, in practice.

Lessons for the animal movement

Consumer action

Changing consumer habits has long been a top priority of animal advocates. The growth of recycling in the United States is an interesting example of a successful shift in household habits. As noted previously, 96% of Americans now participate in recycling at least occasionally, and 76% do so most or all of the time.¹⁸⁰ While some cities mandate recycling, and some states offer small refunds for cans and bottles, these are in the minority. The vast majority of recycling is voluntary,¹⁸¹ and apparently altruistically motivated.

Of course, most people think there are many more barriers to adopting veganism than there are to sorting waste. Perhaps most importantly, landfills never enjoyed the commercial or social protections that animal product consumption does. Landfills are unsightly and foul-smelling, actively opposed by neighboring communities, and often hidden from view. In contrast, animal products enjoy special commercial and social protections. Federal “checkoff” programs for beef, pork, eggs, and dairy use fees from producers to raise demand for their products¹⁸² through advertising (e.g. the “Got Milk” campaign¹⁸³) and research. Meat consumption is socially reinforced by the the “4Ns:” the beliefs that meat-eating is natural, normal, necessary, and nice (i.e. flavorful).¹⁸⁴ When asked to name three reasons why it was acceptable to eat meat, the 4Ns made up 83-91% of responses.¹⁸⁵ Finally, there might be less public enthusiasm today for vegan public mandates than there has been for recycling mandates when those were implemented.

Moral licensing effect

For some environmentalists, recycling has raised concerns of adverse second-order consequences because of the moral licensing effect. While the scale of the problem is not clear, it illustrates that changes in certain behaviors may have unintended effects. Most fundamentally, the moral licensing effect threatens the theoretical foundation of incremental change, in which small actions are supposed to lead to bigger ones.

Moral licensing could manifest in a variety of ways relevant to the animal movement. People active in one area of the movement may feel that their animal advocate identity lessens their obligations to other areas of the movement. For example, someone who bends over backwards to keep their pets happy might give themselves a break when it comes to choosing what to eat. There could also be cross-movement moral licensing, especially when there are tradeoffs to be made, as in making donations or allocating a grocery budget. Someone might spring for organic items in the produce aisle only to pass up pricey free range eggs in favor of caged ones.

The implications of the moral licensing effect for the animal movement depend on the strength, pervasiveness, and persistence of the effect, as well as the power of the opposite effect, moral consistency. At least, it may play a role in the obstacle some people face in converting to and sticking with vegetarianism or veganism. At most, it may represent a fundamental flaw in the incrementalist approach.

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2. “Though she did not set out to do so, Carson influenced the environmental movement as no one had since the 19th century’s most celebrated hermit, Henry David Thoreau, wrote about Walden Pond… Carson, the citizen-scientist, spawned a revolution… she popularized modern ecology… [No other modern environmentalist] was able to galvanize a nation into demanding concrete change in quite the way that Carson did.” – Griswold, E. (2012). How Silent Spring Ignited the Environmental Movement. The New York Times. 

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126. “The size of events ranged from small high-school assemblies to the hundred-thousand participants who created a ‘human jam’ on New York’s Fifth Avenue and flocked to the open-air carnival in the city’s Union Square.” – Hamilton and McCalmont. (2010). April 22, 1970. 

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141. “October 18, 1972: A Wave of Legislation: The Clean Water Act (CWA) becomes the primary legislation governing water pollution in the country. The goal of the CWA is to eliminate toxic substances in water and to uphold surface water to a national standard of cleanliness. The act, an amendment to the Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1948, bestows enforcement authority on the EPA and restructures previous water quality regulations.” – Timeline: The modern environmental movement. PBS American Experience. 

142. “1973: Endangered Species Act. Authorized Secretary of the Interior to list endangered or threatened species.” – Walls. (2014). Environmental Movement. 

143. “October 11, 1976: The Toxic Substances Control Act mandates the EPA to control all new and existing chemical substances being used in the United States. The act controls polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and other toxic products, although the management of existing chemicals are grandfathered and untouched by the act.” – Timeline: The modern environmental movement. PBS American Experience. 

144. [The Earth Day Action Network does not say how this number was estimated. As the main organizer for these events, it may be inclined to estimate liberally for promotional purposes.] – About. Earth Day Action Network. 

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148. However, earlier disasters did not get as much attention, including previous fires on the Cuyahoga River. 

149. “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.” – Nelson. How the First Earth Day Came About. 

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153. Deep ecology is an ecological and environmental philosophy the term for which was coined by Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess. The ethic of deep ecology recognizes the inherent value of all living beings, and considers the natural environment itself as deserving of certain inalienable rights. The rights possessed by the living environment are attributed because all life is considered to be valuable in and of itself, regardless of whether it has instrumental use to humans. Naess cited Silent Spring as a primary influence on this concept. – Deep ecology. Wikipedia. Accessed January 2017. 

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170. Catlin & Wang note that “lack of significance of the green attitude measure… is actually consistent with many other studies.” – Catlin, J. and Wang, Y. (2013). Recycling Gone Bad: When the Option to Recycle Increases Resource Consumption. Journal of Consumer Psychology. 

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173. The impact and cost-effectiveness of recycling relative to other green consumer actions (e.g. energy-efficient lightbulbs, organic food) is not covered here, and would be an interesting area for further study. 

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176. “What’s more, some critics say, household recycling gives people such an easy environmental fix that they have started paying less attention to such serious, complex problems as air and water pollution. Trash sorting, contends environmental fund-raiser Roger Craver, has ‘done more to hurt the environmental movement than anything I can think of.’ ” – Bailey, J. (1995). Waste of a Sort: Curbside Recycling Comforts the Soul, But Benefits are Scant. Associated Press. 

177. Catlin, J. and Wang, Y. (2013). Recycling Gone Bad: When the Option to Recycle Increases Resource Consumption. Journal of Consumer Psychology. 

178. Catlin, J. and Wang, Y. (2013). Recycling Gone Bad: When the Option to Recycle Increases Resource Consumption. Journal of Consumer Psychology. 

179. Catlin, J. and Wang, Y. (2013). Recycling Gone Bad: When the Option to Recycle Increases Resource Consumption. Journal of Consumer Psychology. 

180. “The vast majority of Americans say they recycle. Data from a 2014 survey show that close to half (46%) of Americans say they recycle or reduce waste to protect the environment whenever possible, while 30% say they do so most of the time and 19% report doing so occasionally. Just 4% of the public say they never recycle or reduce waste to protect the environment.” – Anderson, M. (2016). For Earth Day, here’s how Americans view environmental issues. Pew Research Center. 

181. Mandate vs. Volunteer: What Works Better for Recycling? Earth911. 

182. “Commodity checkoff programs are primarily cooperative efforts by groups of suppliers of agricultural products intended to enhance their individual and collective profitability . . . The funds collected by checkoff groups are used primarily to expand demand (both domestic and foreign) through both generic advertising efforts and the development of new uses of the associated commodities.” – Williams, G. and Caps, O. (2006). Overview: Commodity Checkoff Programs. Choices Magazine. 

183. “By the mid-nineties, ninety-one per cent of adults surveyed in the U.S. were familiar with the campaign.” Kardashian, K. (2014). The End of Got Milk. New Yorker Magazine. 

184. “Recent theorizing suggests that the 4Ns – that is, the belief that eating meat is natural, normal, necessary, and nice – are common rationalizations people use to defend their choice of eating meat.” Piazza et al. built on the work of Joy 2010: Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows. An introduction to carnism. – Piazza et al. (2015). Rationalizing Meat Consumption. The 4Ns. Appetite. 

185. “[T]he 4N classification captures the vast majority (83%–91%) of justifications
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