Environmentalism without hippies

If the hippies never existed, what would environmentalism look like today? Would it be as polarizing? Would Nixon have created the EPA? Would anyon know who Al Gore is?
 

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Banned
More right-wing support. A lot of conservatives live in rural areas that are hit pretty hard by environmental damage. The association with hippies and animal-rights types scares off a lot of right-wing types but I could just as easily see the issue being framed as an urban liberal vs rural conservative issue. In the olden days a lot of conservationists were hunters and outdoorsmen, so it's not that far off.
 
More right-wing support. A lot of conservatives live in rural areas that are hit pretty hard by environmental damage. The association with hippies and animal-rights types scares off a lot of right-wing types but I could just as easily see the issue being framed as an urban liberal vs rural conservative issue. In the olden days a lot of conservationists were hunters and outdoorsmen, so it's not that far off.
I wonder if a timeline in which opposition to GMOs is on religious grounds is possible. I could see someone arguing that GMOs are "playing god".
 
One cynical thing to consider: some environmental regulations (for example, restricting logging on federal lands) get pushed thru with lobbying help from megacorps to serve as entry barriers (like Weyerhaeuser and Georgia-Pacific, who already have all the timber leases they need on private lands, and don't want smaller competitors using federal lands)
 
WI native North Americans (Abenaki, Beothuk, Cree, Dakota, etc.) blocked roads to protest large mining corporations poisoning their traditional food sources (e.g. salmon-spawning rivers)?
 
They do that occasionally, but most are working the courts and Congress. My sister in law is a attorney for the Navajo nation & described to me some of the court actions & lobby efforts.
 
That's exactly what I was thinking. GMOs and cloning seem similar to me.
You do understand that agri-scientists arent developing new genes and inserting them right? Every single food you eat is the result of humans messing with genomes through selective breeding. GMOs simply make the process faster, by taking out the slow process of sexual reproduction and instead taking rare genes and inserting into the larger population. If you dont want a GMO, dont eat corn, try eat teosinte instead, because all corn is a Genetically Modified Organism version of teosinte.
 
You do understand that agri-scientists arent developing new genes and inserting them right? Every single food you eat is the result of humans messing with genomes through selective breeding. GMOs simply make the process faster, by taking out the slow process of sexual reproduction and instead taking rare genes and inserting into the larger population. If you dont want a GMO, dont eat corn, try eat teosinte instead, because all corn is a Genetically Modified Organism version of teosinte.
Similarly, every asexually reproducing organism makes clones and cloning just makes asexual reproduction faster.
 
Similarly, every asexually reproducing organism makes clones and cloning just makes asexual reproduction faster.
Actually yes, except the method isnt analogous exactly to GMOs compared to selective breeding. Too many people think of GMOs as being transgenic, and there absolutely zero foods that are transgenic, ie- genes from one species spiced into another species.
 
I and SpaceGeek look into this in 2001: A Space-Time Odyssey
here environmentalism is NOT influence by Hippie movement, but goes way of Terrorism

OTL 1970 the group The "Don't Make a Wave Committee" made a meeting about there Future and Goals
On voting about how to fight, a narrow majority vote for Peaceful protest and so Greenpeace was born

POD Here Paul Watson won and Rainbow Warrior become first eco terrorist group
In begin people become aware of problems of whale hunting and protest against it
But once Rainbow Warrior start to shoot and killed Whalers and Canadian seal hunter, the support dies
and as they start to blow up chemical plants and raid Animal labs, called up the Authority and Anti Terror teams.
off course the Media jump on bandwagon, portray them as Dangerous Maniacs Terrorist
and Hollywood finds the perfect movies villains like in the cult classic "Invasion USA"
Were Chuck Norris fights off a Invasion of eco terrorist group lead by Richard Lynch with plan to blow up US Nuclear plants.
 
I and SpaceGeek look into this in 2001: A Space-Time Odyssey
here environmentalism is NOT influence by Hippie movement, but goes way of Terrorism

OTL 1970 the group The "Don't Make a Wave Committee" made a meeting about there Future and Goals
On voting about how to fight, a narrow majority vote for Peaceful protest and so Greenpeace was born

POD Here Paul Watson won and Rainbow Warrior become first eco terrorist group
In begin people become aware of problems of whale hunting and protest against it
But once Rainbow Warrior start to shoot and killed Whalers and Canadian seal hunter, the support dies
and as they start to blow up chemical plants and raid Animal labs, called up the Authority and Anti Terror teams.
off course the Media jump on bandwagon, portray them as Dangerous Maniacs Terrorist
and Hollywood finds the perfect movies villains like in the cult classic "Invasion USA"
Were Chuck Norris fights off a Invasion of eco terrorist group lead by Richard Lynch with plan to blow up US Nuclear plants.
Chuck Norris is so good at ATLs that the mere mention of his name changes OTL.
 
I remember reading that space exploration influenced the environmental movement. So why couldn't the likes of Buzz Aldrin make environmentalism mainstream.
 
For many people a tipping point was seeing the Cuyhoga River in Cleveland afire on the evening news. I remember how Eisenhower style conservatives like my father were deeply affected by that & similar incidents.
 
I remember reading that space exploration influenced the environmental movement. So why couldn't the likes of Buzz Aldrin make environmentalism mainstream.

It's a common statement that photographs of Earth from space provided emotional ammunition for the early environmentalist movement, but I doubt it myself. The movement was already picking up steam before Apollo 8 (Silent Spring pre-dates it by six years), and to be blunt most people who work in the aerospace industry have tended to view environmentalism as an enemy movement. That one of their early successes was canceling the Supersonic Transport project did not help, nor did early environmentalist opposition to atomic power. To this day global warming 'skepticism' is rather common among engineers. Indeed, the Apollo 17 astronaut who snapped the famous Blue Marble photograph disagrees with the consensus!

Environmentalism, at its ideological foundation, is incompatible with the technooptimism that characterizes the aerospace industry. A techno-environmentalism would differ greatly from it, and would essentially require an early recognition of the harmful consequences of global warming and loss of biodiversity--preferably in the 1940s or 1950s. At that point, it can still mesh well with post-war technooptimism to provide engineering-based solutions--nuclear reactors, space solar power, geoengineering, urban planning that discourages suburbs, etc.
 
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