Description
Book SynopsisOffers the first comprehensive history of the period when the US created the legislative, legal, and administrative structures for environmental protection that are still in place today. The book tells a dramatic story of cultural change, grassroots activism, and political leadership that led to the passage of a host of laws attacking pollution.
Trade ReviewThe Green Years is vivid, thoroughly researched, and authentic. Brings you into that era. Absorbing and full of insights." - Michael McCloskey, chairman (retired), Sierra Club
"As we face the crisis of climate change, this important history of earlier environmental legislation helps us remember that organized movements can persuade even the most recalcitrant politicians to reshape their legislative agendas.
The Green Years is a very compelling story." - Barbara Dudley, former executive director, Greenpeace USA
"This book is an ambitious narrative history of environmental politics and policy in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Green Years is the most comprehensive history of environmentalism’s legislative achievements during its most fruitful period." - Robert D. Lifset, author of
Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism"
The Green Years, 1964–1976, offers a detailed, well-documented, and thoroughly rewarding history of a unique period in US environmental policymaking. In the 1960s and 1970s, the federal government approved most of the modern conservation and environmental protection policies, typically with broad bipartisan cooperation. Given today’s often intense partisan polarization over many of the same issues, the book’s careful review of major policy decisions of that period speaks to what it takes to achieve that kind of bipartisanship today." - Michael E. Kraft, professor emeritus of political science and public and environmental affairs, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
"This book is a rich treasure trove that illuminates just how profoundly the polarization of America’s political parties has made more difficult—or arguably impossible—the responsiveness of the federal government to public attitudes and sentiment—the very ingredient that Abraham Lincoln argued was the bedrock of our politics. Today you simply can’t conceive that a presidential candidate of the minority party embracing a new issue—as Muskie did the environment in 1970—would stimulate a race to be even more responsive by the incumbent party, as Nixon did. Nixon was looking for bridges, not wedges. And that’s why we made the environmental progress we did. We need a new politics if we want to resume that path forward." - Carl Pope, former executive director, Sierra Club
