The History and Future of Environmental Activism

Environmental activism has had a long history and is ever more important today now that great and global environmental challenges are requiring us to take actions upon.

One of the earlier large scale environmental movement traces back to when Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring. The book revealed the truth about DDT – the fact that it kills birds and insects – and criticized the company producing DDT for producing such dangerous products without informing its customers about its effects.

Carson’s book lead to widespread discussion on environmentalism topics, the ban of DDT, the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency, and the start of the modern environmental activism movement.
Then, other events such as the Rio Earth Summit and the release of the documentary An Inconvenient Truth occurred. The Rio Earth Summit is the first every world-scale conference on environmental problems. Discussing the use of resources in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, countries came to agreements upon how we can more sustainably use shared resources and the establishment of the annual COP meetings, which continued until today.

Documentaries such as An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore has revealed to the public the truth about climate change and further enhanced environmental awareness in the modern society.

Despite having such as long history, environmental activism is still prosperously developing and growing today. It is, indeed, an important subject to discuss given the current context of great environmental challenges.