The specter of environmentalism: Wilderness, environmental politics, and the evolution of the new right

Journal of American History

Volumn 96, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 123-148

  Turner, James Morton ^a  

^a WELLESLEY COLLEGE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 67651215413     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/27694734     Document Type: Review

References (173)

1. Tim Peckinpaugh, Republican Study Committee, "Special Report: The Specter of Environmentalism," 1982, folder 52, box 267, series 9, Sierra Club Records, BANC MSS 71/103 c (Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley);
2. "Interview with James Watt," Human Events, July 3, 1982.
3. The classic study of the modern environmental movement is Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (New York, 1987).
4. See also Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, 2005);
5. Adam Rome, Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (New York, 2001);
6. Hal K. Rothman, The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (Fort Worth, 1998);
7. and Victor B. Scheffer, The Shaping of Environmentalism in America (Seattle, 1991).
8. Historians have given little attention to the environmental opposition, according to Samuel P. Hays, A History of Environmental Politics since 1945 (Pittsburgh, 2000), 109-21.
9. On that opposition, see R. McGreggor Cawley, Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics (Lawrence, 1993);
10. James McCarthy, "Environmentalism, Wise Use, and the Nature of Accumulation in the Rural West," in Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millennium, ed. Bruce Baun and Noel Castree (New York, 1998), 126-49;
11. Jacqueline Vaughn Switzer, Green Backlash: The History and Politics of Environmental Opposition in the U.S. (Boulder, 1997);
12. and David Helvarg, The War against the Greens: The Wise-Use Movement, the New Right, and Anti-environmental Violence (San Francisco, 1994).
13. For the distinction between "old" conservation issues and "new" environmental issues, or "first-" and "second-" generation issues, see Robert Cameron Mitchell, Angela A. Mertig, and Riley E. Dunlap, "Twenty Years of Environmental Mobilization: Trends among National Environmental Organizations," in American Environmentalism: The U.S. Environmental Movement, 1970-1990, ed. Riley E. Dunlap and Angela G. Mertig (Washington, 1992), 13-14;
14. Kirkpatrick Sale, The Green Revolution: The Environmental Movement, 1962-1992 (New York, 1993), 14, 18;
15. Stephen Fox, The American Conservation Movement: John Muir and His Legacy (Madison, 1981), 291-92;
16. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence, 13-39;
17. Philip Shabecoff, Earth Rising: American Environmentalism in the 21st Century (Washington, 2000), 3-7;
18. and Scott Hamilton Dewey, Don't Breathe the Air: Air Pollution and U.S. Environmental Politics, 1945-1970 (College Station, 2000), 1.
19. On western political history, its complexities, and the importance of the West to the rise of the New Right, see Alan Brinkley, "The Problem of American Conservatism," American Historical Review, 99 (April 1994), 409-29;
20. Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own": A New History of the American West (Norman, 2001), 370-82, 576, 604;
21. Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton, 2001);
22. Daniel Kemmis, This Sovereign Land: A New Vision for Governing the American West (Washington, 2001), 103-35;
23. and Jennifer Burns, "O Libertarian, Where Is Thy Sting?" Journal of Policy History, 19 (Fall 2007), 452-70.
24. For the full taxonomy of liberalism drawn on here, see Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War (New York, 1996), 8-11.
25. On the environmental movement and the Great Society, see Adam Rome, "'Give Earth a Chance': The Environmental Movement and the Sixties," Journal of American History, 90 (Sept. 2003), 527-34.
26. Wilderness Act, P.L. 16 U.S.C. sec. 2(a) (1964). The Wilderness Act required the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service to undertake a ten-year wilderness review process that included an agency review at the local and national levels, local public hearings, recommendations to the president, and a presidential recommendation to Congress. In 1964 the Wilderness Act required reviews of approximately 60 million acres. In the 1970s wilderness advocates expanded the reviews to include additional national forest land, federal lands in Alaska, and the public domain overseen by the Bureau of Land Management in the lower forty-eight states. An important exception to the emphasis on the national interest was the call made in William O. Douglas, A Wilderness Bill of Rights (New York, 1965).
27. On the commitment to individual rights inspiring that call, see Adam M. Sowards, "William O. Douglas's Wilderness Politics: Public Protest and Committees of Correspondence in the Pacific Northwest," Western Historical Quarterly, 37 (Spring 2006), 21-42.
28. On the campaign for the Wilderness Act, see Mark Harvey, Wilderness Forever: Howard Zahniser and the Path to the Wilderness Act (Seattle, 2005), 186-223;
29. and Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven, 2001), 200-237. In 1962 the federal government produced a report on the nations recreational resources and public lands that was important to the debates over the Wilderness Act.
30. See Wildland Research Center, Wilderness and Recreation: A Report on Resources, Values, and Problems (Washington, 1962).
31. Stewart L. Udall, "To Save the Wonder of Wilderness," New York Times Sunday Magazine, May 27, 1962, p. 13;
32. Michael Nadel, "The Wilderness Act's Land Requirements," Living Wilderness (Autumn-Winter 1962), 45.
33. On the political history of the Wilderness Act, particularly the roles of Wayne Aspinall and John Saylor, see Thomas G. Smith, Green Republican: John Saylor and the Preservation of America's Wilderness (Pittsburgh, 2006), 158-79;
34. Harvey, Wilderness Forever, 224-43;
35. and Steven C. Schulte, Wayne Aspinall and the Shaping of the American West (Boulder, 2002), 130-62.
36. Stewart M. Brandborg, "The Wilderness Act in Practice: The First Three Years," April 7, 1967, folder 10, box 136, series 2.30, Sierra Club National Legislative Office Papers, BANC MSS 71/289 c (Bancroft Library). The strategy of the Wilderness Society is reflected in its archives, congressional wilderness hearings, and its magazine, the Living Wilderness.
37. See "Cogs and Levers," Living Wilderness, 37 (Winter 1974), 5.
38. On one of the few demonstrations organized in support of public lands protection, an effort in the late 1960s to protect French Pete near Eugene, Oregon, see Kevin R. Marsh, Drawing Lines in the Forest: Creating Wilderness Areas in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, 2007), 113-17.
39. On the emphasis on working through the political system in campaigns for clean air and clean water legislation in the 1960s and early 1970s, see Dewey, Don't Breathe the Air, 135-57;
40. and Paul Charles Milazzo, Unlikely Environmentalists: Congress and Clean Water, 1945-1972 (Lawrence, 2006), 139-62.
41. On the transformation of liberal politics, see Brinkley, End of Reform, 8-11;
42. Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York, 2004), 47-66, 269-300;
43. and Terry H. Anderson, The Sixties (New York, 1999), 181-209.
44. Douglas W. Scott, "Student Activism on Environmental Crisis," Living Wilderness, 34 (Spring 1970), 8;
45. Edward P. Morgan, The Sixties Experience: Hard Lessons about Modern America (Philadelphia, 1991), 12.
46. Accounts that emphasize the radical or countercultural origins of the "new" environmental movement, include ibid., 231-42;
47. Fox, American Conservation Movement, 322-26;
48. Christopher J. Bosso, "Adaptation and Change in the Environmental Movement," in Interest Group Politics, ed. Allan J. Cigler and Burdett A. Loomis (Washington, 1991), 151-54;
49. and Bruce J. Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York, 2001), 88-91.
50. See J. Brooks Flippen, Nixon and the Environment (Albuquerque, 2000). None of the legislation makes specific reference to the rights of people to a clean environment or to the rights of nature. Most often the laws refer to the value of protecting the "public health and welfare."
51. See the Wilderness Act, PL. 16 U.S.C. 1131 (1964);
52. Air Pollution Prevention and Control Act, P.L. 42 U.S.C. (1967);
53. National Environmental Policy Act, PL. 42 U.S.C. 4321 (1970);
54. Clean Air Amendments, P.L. 42 U.S.C. 7401 (1970);
55. and Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments, P.L. 33 U.S.C. 1251 (1970). Nixon vetoed the Federal Water Pollution Control amendments, but his veto was overridden with bipartisan support.
56. See Flippen, Nixon and the Environment, 182-83.
57. Edmund Muskie, "A Whole Society," in Earth Day: The Beginning, ed. Steve Cotton (New York, 1970), 92.
58. Edmund Muskie did draw on rights-based arguments in his political support for clean air and water. But in the official compilation of Earth Day speeches, only one of fifty speakers placed particular emphasis on rights-based political claims. For the exception, a lawyer and founder of the Environmental Defense Fund, see Victor J. Yannacone, "Sue the Bastards," in ibid., 205-15.
59. Ted Stevens, "Speech before the League for Advancement of States' Equal Rights," Nov. 21, 1980, folder 11, box 224, series 69, Sierra Club Members Papers, BANC MSS 71/295 c (Bancroft Library). On the expansion of wilderness reviews in the 1970s, see James Morton Turner, "The Politics of Modern Wilderness," in American Wilderness: A New History, ed. Michael Lewis (New York, 2007).
60. "The Big Federal Land Grab," Conservative Digest, 4 (Dec. 1978), 7-11;
61. June Allen and Matt Hammer, "Free Alaska," song, 1980, folder 6, box 3, Harry Crandell Papers (Denver Public Library, Denver, Colo.);
62. "Marching Again," Fairbanks News-Miner, Dec. 18, 1978, clipping, ibid.;
63. Boise Cascade Advertisement, ". . . a Voice, Crying in the Wilderness," Boise Idaho Statesman, April 9, 1972, clipping, ibid.;
64. Jim Santini in U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Sagebrush Rebellion: Impacts on Energy and Minerals, 96 Cong., 2 sess., Nov. 22, 1980, pp. 2-3.
65. On the history of the sagebrush rebellion, see Cawley, Federal Land, Western Anger;
66. Switzer, Green Backlash, 171-90;
67. and C. Brant Short, Ronald Reagan and the Public Lands: America's Conservation Debate (College Station, 1989).
68. On debates over property rights, states' rights, and other political claims important to public lands politics, see Karen R. Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meanings: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property between Them (Berkeley, 2002).
69. On the influence of a western "liberal sensibility," see Burns, "O Libertarian, Where Is Thy Sting?," 464-66.
70. Las Cruces Jeep Club, "The Creeping Wilderness Is About to Run Over You!," bumper sticker, Dec. 1978, Rupert Cutler Papers (Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, Ga.);
71. Michael Kazin, "The Grass-Roots Right: New Histories of U.S. Conservatism in the Twentieth Century," American Historical Review, 97 (Feb. 1992), 136-55.
72. On corporate ties, see Richard Reid, "Handwritten Notes on the RARE II Symposium," Aug. 19-20, 1978, box 47, Western Timber Association Records (Forest History Society, Durham, N.C.);
73. Joseph Coors, "Letter to Concerned Colora-doan," 1980, folder 29, box 3, series 12, Wilderness Society Records, cons 130, Conservation Collection (Denver Public Library).
74. Orrin Hatch, "Questions and Answers Regarding Public Lands Reform Act of 1981," 1981, folder 11, box 273, Alan K. Simpson Papers (University of Wyoming, Laramie);
75. Bureau of Land Management, Public Land Statistics (Washington, 1980).
76. On the politics of individual states, see Switzer, Green Backlash, 180-82.
77. Russ Donley, Wyoming state legislator, in Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, Sagebrush Rebellion, 7-8.
78. On the political claims of the sagebrush rebellion, see Cawley, Federal Land, Western Anger, 92-122.
79. For party representation in the Senate, see Statistics and Lists, United States Senate, Senate Service Records, http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/ reference/three-column-table/Senators.hfm.
80. On the ideological commitments of the new cohort of Republican senators in the late 1970s and early 1980s, see Thomas Byrne Edsall, The New Politics of Inequality (New York, 1984), 67-106.
81. For the statement by Steven Symms, see Philip Shabecoff, "Issue and Debate Easing Federal Control of Public Land," New York Times, Feb. 10, 1981, p. A21.
82. Curtis Wilkie, "In West, Liberals Fight Back," Boston Globe, Oct. 20, 1980, p. 1.
83. For a sympathetic account, see Ron Arnold, At the Eye of the Storm: James Watt and the Environmentalists (Washington, 1982).
84. James Watt, "Address to Conference of National Park Concessionaires," March 9, 1981, folder 19, box 36, series 5, Wilderness Society Records;
85. James Watt, "Remarks Before the 45th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference," March 23, 1981, folder 9, box 11, James Watt Papers (University of Wyoming);
86. Wilderness Society, "Statement of Reasons for Opposition to Nomination of James G. Watt," 1981, folder 23, box 3, series 12, Wilderness Society Records;
87. Coors, "Letter to Concerned Coloradoan";
88. Stevens, "Speech before the League for Advancement of States' Equal Rights";
89. James Watt, "Interview on CNN," March 27, 1982, folder 29, box 36, series 5, Wilderness Society Records.
90. On the Reagan administration's public lands initiatives, see Cawley, Federal Land, Western Anger, 113-18;
91. Rothman, Greening of a Nation?, 174-80, 186-89;
92. and Jeffrey K. Stine, "Natural Resources and Environmental Policy," in The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and Its Legacies, ed. W. Eliot Brownlee and Hugh Davis Graham (Lawrence, 2003), 236-39. Several of the administrative initiatives were successfully challenged in the courts. "Interview with James Watt."
93. Dave Foreman, "Memo re: Sagebrush Rebellion and Public Land Grazing Issues," Aug. 30, 1979, folder "Issues: Sagebrush Rebellion, 1979-1980," box 30B, series 4, Colorado Environmental Coalition Papers (Denver Public Library);
94. "Proceedings of Sagebrush Rebellion 'Counterinsurgency' Conference, Denver," Oct. 26-27, 1979, folder 16, box 8, series 1, Wilderness Society Records;
95. Doug Scott, "Status of Major Conservation Campaigns," Aug. 31, 1981, folder 16, box 257, series 9.3, Sierra Club Records.
96. Sierra Club, "Watt Petition," April 5, 1981, folder 10, box 36, series 5, Wilderness Society Records.
97. For membership statistics, see Mitchell, Mertig, and Dunlap, "Twenty Years of Environmental Mobilization," 13.
98. On James Watt's resignation, see folder 16, box 10, Watt Papers. Between 1977 and 1979 the Forest Service undertook a review of 62 million acres of roadless national forests to meet the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act. It then recommended wilderness designation for 15 million acres of land and multiple-use management for 36 million acres and left 11 million acres in a further planning category. Between 1980 and 1982 most legislative proposals to act on these recommendations met with congressional gridlock. Conservative Republicans pushed legislation to accelerate the time frame for wilderness designation and to limit future reviews. Democrats and their environmental allies pushed a state-by-state solution that protected some roadless areas as wilderness, released undesignated land for multiple-use management, and avoided any long-term limits on future wilderness reviews. On the Republican legislative initiatives, see "RARE II National 'Release' Expected," Public Land News, April 2, 1981, p. 3.
99. On compromise state-by-state legislation, see boxes 24 and 30, series 3, Crandell Papers. Although Jimmy Carter protected the greatest amount of federal land as wilderness, Ronald Reagan signed into law the largest number of wilderness bills (44 bills protecting approximately 11.6 million acres). See "Public Laws Affecting America's Wilderness Database," Wilderness.net, http://www.wilderness.net/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec= pubLawLib.
100. The Wilderness Society compiled a two-volume brief on Watt, the Reagan administration, and its antienvironmental agenda: "The Watt Book," 1981, boxes 35-37, series 5, Wilderness Society Records.
101. People for the West!, "Grassroots Activism Tells Rural America's Story," 1993, folder 7, box 3, series 12, ibid.;
102. Ralph Noyes, Western States Public Lands Coalition, "Three Steps We Can Take To Help Save Public Lands Multiple Use," Jan. 1993, ibid.;
103. People for the West!, "New Chapters in Denver, Colorado Springs," 1993, ibid.;
104. People for the West!, "The Rush Is On!," 1994, ibid.;
105. People for the West!, "The Campaign for the Western Mining Community," 1989, ibid.;
106. Heidi Walters, "People for the USA! Disbands," High Country News, Dec. 18, 2000;
107. People for the West!, "Wise Use Leadership Conference," 1992, folder 39, box 3, series 12, Wilderness Society Records;
108. Switzer, Green Backlash, 171-280. The wise use movement also spawned more radical, sometimes violent, activities, on its fringe. On such extremism, see Helvarg, War against the Greens.
109. For the number of new and expanded wilderness areas, see "Search Wilderness Data," Wilderness.net, http://www.wilderness.net/index. cfm?fuse=NWPS&sec=advSearch.
110. For statistics on employment in western resources industries, see Thomas M. Power and Richard N. Barrett, Post-Cowboy Economics: Pay and Prosperity in the New American West (Washington, 2001), 54, 77.
111. On the T-shirt, see John Lancaster, "Drawing the Line on West's Wilderness," Washington Post, April 23, 1991, p. 1.
112. T. H. Watkins, "Wise Use: Discouragements and Clarifications," in Let the People Judge: Wise Use and the Private Property Rights Movement, ed. John D. Echeverria and Ray Booth Eby (Washington, 1995), 45;
113. Northwest Legal Foundation, "Letter to President Bush," in The Wise Use Agenda: The Citizen's Policy Guide to Environmental Resource Issues, ed. Alan M. Gottlieb (Bellevue, 1989), 143-44.
114. On the political context of wise use, see Phil Brick, "Determined Opposition: The Wise Use Movement Challenges Environmentalism," in Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and the Environment, ed. Craig Waddell (Mahwah, 1998), 195-208;
115. McCarthy, "Environmentalism, Wise Use, and the Nature of Accumulation in the Rural West," 126-49;
116. and Gundars Rudzitis, Wilderness and the Changing American West (New York, 1996), 145-49.
117. On the political strategies of the New Right, see Kevin Michael Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton, 2005), 8-9;
118. and McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 166.
119. Gottlieb, ed., Wise Use Agenda;
120. Ron Arnold, "Introduction," ibid., ix-xiii, esp. x;
121. "The Top Twenty-five Goals," ibid., 10-15;
122. Alan M. Gottlieb, "Preface," ibid., xvii-xx.
123. Oregon Lands Coalition, "The OLC Network - It's Working," Oct. 30, 1990, folder 4, box 3, series 12, Wilderness Society Records;
124. Chuck Cushman, "Roundtable at the Society of Environmental Journalists on Wise Use," Nov. 19, 1992, folder 16, box 10, series 5, ibid.
125. For a list of organizations involved in wise use, see Wilderness Impact Research Foundation, "1988 National Wilderness Conference," 1988, folder 8, box 3, series 12, ibid.
126. For Dick Carver's statement, see Jon Christensen, "Nevada's Most Rebellious," High Country News, Oct. 30, 1995, http://www.hcn.org/ issues/46/1410.
127. On the strategic mistakes of the sagebrush rebellion, see Wayne Hage, Storm over Rangelands: Private Rights in Federal Lands (Bellevue, 1989). Wise use advocates claimed grazing permits represented a private property right, since they are transferred with privately owned ranches.
128. See, for example, ibid., 3. Such claims have never been recognized by the courts, but they have been central to political debates over public lands management.
129. See Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meaning. The emphasis on rights is evident in Blue Ribbon Coalition, "Don't Be Locked Out, Fight Back!," 1991, folder 13, box 3, series 12, Wilderness Society Records.
130. Fly-In for Freedom, "Press Packet: Fly-In for Freedom," Sept. 21, 1992, ibid.
131. On the turn toward a rights-based politics and the conservative Right, see Kruse, White Flight, 5-11.
132. See also Michael Lassiter, The Silent Majority: Suburban Politics in the Sunbelt South (Princeton, 2006), 301-23;
133. Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, 1996), 209-30;
134. and McGirr, Suburban Warriors, 176.
135. Jim Norton, "Monthly Report," March 10, 1992, folder 9, box 17, series 9, Wilderness Society Records.
136. For examples of such technical analyses, see Peter M. Emerson et al., Wasting the National Forests: Selling Timber below Cost (Washington, 1984);
137. and David Wilcove, National Forests: Policies for the Future, Protecting Biological Diversity (Washington, 1989).
138. Bruce Babbitt, "Remarks to the National Press Club," April 27, 1993, folder 47, box 10, series 5, Wilderness Society Records. On environmental politics in the 1990s, see Christopher McGrory Klyza and David Sousa, American Environmental Policy, 1990-2006: Beyond Gridlock (Cambridge, Mass., 2008), 47-98.
139. "Sample Letter to Wilderness Society Members re: Wise Use," Oct. 1, 1992, foldet 3, box 2, series 5, Wilderness Society Records;
140. Jim Baca, "Memo to TWS Governing Council re: People for the West!," Oct. 1, 1991, folder 23, box 16, series 12, ibid.;
141. Mary Hanley, "Memo re: Wise (Use) Guys," Nov. 22, 1991, folder 13, box 3, ibid.;
142. "Memo re: Wise Use Leadership Conference," June 15, 1992, folder 39, ibid.
143. Joel Connelly, "Republicans Draw Battle Line in Western States," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Oct. 22, 1994, p. A1;
144. Rob Eure, "'Wise Use' Movement Gains Foothold," Portland Oregonian, Nov. 3,1994, p. A1;
145. Jim Simon, "Gorton Stumping Far from King County," Seattle Times, Nov. 6, 1994, p. B1;
146. Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey, Contract with America (New York, 1994), 125;
147. People for the West!, "Election '94 Presents Opportunities," 1993, folder 7, box 3, series 12, Wilderness Society Records. On the shift in western politics, see Joel Connelly, "Republican House Members Hone Axes," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Dec. 30, 1994, p. A1.
148. On the importance of the West, see Rocky Barker, "Disgusted with Politics, Voters Turn to GOP," Idaho Falls Post Register, Nov. 6, 1994, p. B1.
149. Gingrich and Armey, Contract with America.
150. On the Republicans' strategies on public lands and environmental issues in the 104th Congress, see Klyza and Sousa, American Environmental Policy, 55-62, 71-82, 114-16.
151. Jerry Greenberg, "Memo re: Takings Information," Dec. 29, 1994, folder 13, box 17, series 9, Wilderness Society Records;
152. "The G.O.P.s War on Nature," New York Times, May 31, 1995, p. A20;
153. U.S. Forest Service, National Summary: Forest Management Program Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1996 (Washington, 1997).
154. Wise Use, "Top Twenty-five Goals," 10-15;
155. Richard White, "The Current Weirdness in the West," Western Historical Quarterly, 28 (Spring 1997), 15. The Clean Air Act of 1990 marked an important step toward market-based environmental regulation.
156. On George H. W. Bush's record more generally, see National Democratic Party, "The Environmental President? This Guy Must Be Kidding," Sept. 16, 1991, folder 46, box 45, series 5, Wilderness Society Records. Tom Delay, "Letter to Republican Colleagues," Oct. 17, 1995, folder 15, box 17, series 9, ibid.
157. On the Republican party's changing approach to environmental issues in the West, see Kemmis, This Sovereign Land, 203-34.
158. In the mid-1990s the Wilderness Society undertook a review of its structure, goals, and policies that is manifest in the organization's archives. One prominent critic of the Wilderness Society and the mainstream environmental movement in the mid-1990s was Alexander Cockburn of the Nation. See, for example, Alexander Cockburn, "The Green Betrayers," Nation, Feb. 6, 1995, p. 157. Scholars have also questioned the strategies of wilderness advocates and the mainstream environmental movement.
159. See J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, eds., The Great New Wilderness Debate (Athens, Ga., 1998);
160. William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (New York, 1995);
161. and Mark Dowie, Losing Ground: American Environmentalism at the Close of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1995).
162. William Cronon, "When the G.O.P. Was Green," New York Times, Jan. 8, 2001, p. 17.
163. For examples of similar arguments, see Rothman, Greening of a Nation?, 96-98;
164. Shabecoff, Earth Rising, 5-6;
165. and Doug Scott, The Enduring Wilderness: Protecting Our Heritage through the Wilderness Act (Golden, 2004), 76-77, 116, 147.
166. Julius Turner and Edward V. Schneier Jr., Party and Constituency: Pressures on Congress (Baltimore, 1970);
167. Riley E. Dunlap and Michael Patrick Allen, "Partisan Differences on Environmental Issues: A Congressional Roll-Call Analysis," Western Political Quarterly, 29 (Sept. 1976), 384-97.
168. Data on partisanship since 1973 are based on my review and analysis of the League of Conservation Voters' annual record of votes on environmental issues in the House of Representatives. "Past National Environmental Scorecards," League of Conservation Voters, http://www.lcv.org/ scorecard/past-scorecards.
169. Smith, Green Republican;
170. Schulte, Wayne Aspinall and the Shaping of the American West;
171. J. Brooks Flippen, Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism (Baton Rouge, 2006).
172. The point generally holds for national elections. For arguments that "environmental issues seldom shape individual vote preference" and the environment is rarely an "important Wing' issue" for most voters in federal elections, see Deborah Lynn Guber, "Voting Preferences and the Environment in the American Electorate," Society and Natural Resources, 14 (July 2001), 455-69.
173. See also Kraft, "Environmental Policy in Congress," 132-33.