Fifty four years ago, on this day, January 7, 1970 a pre-Earth Day radical student group called “Ecology Action East” was ahead of the game, in terms of how it’s a BIG puzzle. They said that they believed:
– that the ecological crisis is fundamentally a social problem, deeply rooted in the structure of society and in the cultural values that this society generates and reinforces.
–that all social institutions of domination and exploitation, from the patriarchal family to the modem nation-state, must be dissolved.
— that… the ecology movement is also inseparable from the liberation movement of colonial peoples, black and brown people, American Indians, working people, gay people, women, youth, and children.
(Rat, January 7, 1970, p. 10)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 324ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that, from 1968 onwards, people had started to think seriously about the consequences of modernity, (good title – someone should write a book. Oh, wait they have) and the ecological impacts that might be coming down the pipe, and because of the pipe. In September ‘69, there’d been the announcement that an Earth Day would happen. But this was sponsored by a US senator, albeit a liberal one. And in the context of the Vietnam War a lot of activists were taking a serious look into the mouth of the gift horse. And groups like Ecology Action East, marrying the radical as in root cause, to critique of US imperialism as it applied to Vietnam with an ecological sensibility, and seeing that it was also connected to all these other issues. This is really intersectionality long before the word was invented.
What we can learn is that most of us have, a lot of us have known for a long, long time that the issues were linked, even hyperlinked, and that you weren’t going to “solve” any one without solving a lot else, though, you might have some short term gains.
What happened next. Groups like Ecology Action East were unable to sustain their momentum. And it all went tits up for them within a couple of years. And it was only another 20 years almost later, that ecology was really kicked off.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References
Ecology Action East. 1970. The Power to Destroy – The Power to Create. Root & Branch No. 1, pp. 8-14
https://libcom.org/library/manifesto-ecology-action-east
Also on this day:
January 7, 2013 – Australian climate activist pretends to be ANZ bank, with spectacular results
Jan 7, 2013 – Paper (briefly) wraps rock. But coal wins in the end… #auspol