RECOMMENDED READING

Reclaiming Paradise
a review by Ron Mader

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John McCormick's Reclaiming Paradise is almost a decade old, yet its review the origins of the global environmental movement is as timely as ever. The author reviews the roots of environmentism, and notes that "with a persistent and misguided regularity, environmentalism has been declared dead, dying or defunct since almost before it was born." (p. 198)

Chapters examine tendencies in the "North" and the "South" in developing politics and activism. First published in 1989, the book is somewhat dated, but it provides a fascinating history. The book was republished in Britain's John Wiley Publishing in 1995 under the title "The Global Environmental Movement." The book may be hard to find, but it's well worth the effort tracking this down.

Excerpts from Reclaiming Paradise:

Of all the conceptual revolutions of the twentieth century, few have wrought so universal or so fundamental a change in human values as the environmental revolution. (Introduction)

The environmental movement had no clear beginning. There was no single event that sparked a mass movement, no great orator or prophet who arose to fire the masses, few great battles lost or work, and few dramatic landmarks. The movement did not begin in one country and then spread to another; it emerged in different places at different times, and usually for different reasons. (p.1)

In 1968 and 1972, two international conferences were held to assess the problems of the global environment and, more importantly, to suggest corrective action. The first was the Biosphere Conference, held in Paris in 1968 ... The second was the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm in June 1972. Stockholm was without doubt the landmark event in the growth of international environmentalism. It resulted directly in the creation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). It also marked a transition: from the emotional and occasionally naive New Environmentalism of the 1960s to the more rational, political and global perspective of the 1970s. (p. 88)

Before Stockholm, many environmentalists had questioned -- and rejected -- the growth ethic. For them, economic growth was suspect and inimical to sound and rational environmental management. There was little room for compromise. A decade after Stockholm, attitudes were more conciliatory. (p. 149)

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Ron Mader lives in Mexico and hosts the award-winning Planeta.com website -- www.planeta.com. Ron is the author of the Exploring Ecotourism Resource Guide and can be contracted for presentations and workshops.

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