Ch 23 - Experiencing the Anthropocene: Green and Global

In what way(s) do you see the historical developments described in this chapter continuing to evolve in our world today? Make a separate blog post for each chapter. 

I see the historical development in the consequences that industrialized society has left behind, and continues to create; My hope is that we became more aware of the importance of taking care of our planet.

 The environmentalist movement began in late 18th and early 19th century as a response to the industrial revolution which left great ecological damage; several renowned personalities denounced these actions such as William Blake and William Wordsworth; they described the industrial era’s “ dark, satanic mills,” which threaten “the green and pleasant land of an earlier England” (p.1055.) In addition, the British writer John Ruskin in 1876 declared. “The frenzy of avarice is daily drowning our sailors, suffocating our miner, poisoning our children and blasting the cultivable surface of England into treeless waste of Ashes”.  Gandhi also feared the same would happen in India during his time in England in the late 1880s:  “God forbid” he later wrote, “that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West”, unfortunately it was just a matter of time (p.1055). The environmentalist movement did not reach momentum until the 2nd. half of the 20th century. The regular population continued to harm the environment here in the US, until “the second wave environmentalism” occurred in the 1960s (p.1056). Rachel Carson was a pioneer of environmentalism, and this movement began in 1962 after her book “Silent Spring” was launched. It critiqued the devastating impact of unregulated pesticides had in the environment.  After this, people became more aware and action was taken first from grass roots and then from citizen protests, in fact, by the late 1900s, millions of people in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia, and New  Zealand have joined organization that protect the environment. We are now more aware of the ecological damage human beings can cause to our planet, and I hope that ideas of sustainability, and restrain became part of our modern value world wide.