An ecological awakening
‘Silent Spring Revolution’ explores history of U.S. environmental advocacy
Imagine a moment that Douglas Brinkley didn’t enjoy childhood the way the rest of us did. Imagine the award-winning historian and Rice University professor being born in Toledo, Ohio, 61 years ago and, clad in diapers, whacking at a keyboard, writing, editing and anthologizing books about the history of our nation.
Because even if Brinkley started typing at birth, he’d still have offered us a historical volume each year for two-thirds of his life.
Brinkley has edited the letters of Hunter S. Thompson and presented an account of the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans. He’s covered the life of newsmen like Walter Cronkite and the radical history of the work that put a man on the moon.
Brinkley serves as CNN’s presidential historian, as well as the Katherine Tsanoff Brown professor in humanities at Rice University. Starting with his book about the hurricane that consumed New Orleans, Brinkley has spent much of his time and attention presenting the history of ecological concerns and conservation in the United States. He wrote books about both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and their efforts to preserve nature.
His latest is “Silent Spring Revolution,” a deepdive history about the efforts that those Roosevelts pushed into being. “Silent Spring Revolution” concerns itself with a lot of known entities (John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon) but also heroic Americans who never rose to the level of cultural ubiquity that presidents do.
The book also offers a peaceful path forward for a nation consumed by divisiveness. The heroes in Brinkley’s new book include environmental advocate and journalist Rachel Carson, first and foremost. But he also frames eras when elected officials like Nixon made conservation efforts that might come across as radical today.
Brinkley calls “Silent Spring Revolution” the “most important book I’ve ever written,” which is an arresting bit of commentary.
His book tour begins in Houston with an appearance at the Progressive Forum this week.
Q: I feel like with “The Great Deluge,” you hit this track with books involving the nation and its government and how it deals with the environment. But this one had a bigger, broader view than those about the Roosevelts.
A: This environmental movement in the ’60s and ’70s, it’s never been done in a holistic fashion before. I’d done the book on Theodore Roosevelt, and that was about the natural world. The FDR book was about conservation corps. But in the ’60s, those efforts weren’t about a president. It was Rachel Carson who made the difference. Thomas Payne wrote “Common Sense,” and Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Upton Sinclair had “The Jungle.” Carson’s “Silent Spring” was one of those rare pieces of literature that rocks the country.
And it happened because she was doing her research and realized World War II had sped up all our chemical manufacturing. There were no laws. We released contaminants and chemicals that had their uses but also their ugly side. The fact that we were testing bombs willy nilly in Nevada and making people sick, that we were spraying DDT all over fields. So a movement developed in response to that. Carson wrote three beautiful books about the sea in the ’40s and ’50s. Kennedy comes in and he wants to save his beloved Cape Cod from destruction. William Douglas on the Supreme Court became a one-man EPA. These people urged us to quit treating rivers and lakes as sewage ditches.
People asked, “How is this America the beautiful?” And people of color, people in poor neighborhoods, their neighborhoods became dumping grounds for industrial debris. You saw cancer rates spike in parts of Houston and Atlanta. At that time, all of this was swirling around. Animals were going extinct. It’s a fact that the bald eagle almost went away. The condor practically vanished. So there became a movement. This book came about because it wasn’t a single person who did it.
Q: Maybe I’m getting far from home here … but this movement is today rejected with vigor. How did we get from conservationist Richard Nixon to present? I know the war in Vietnam created a culture fissure we’re still unable to patch.
A: I find the key year 1973. Nixon was under siege with Watergate. We had the Arab oil embargo, high gas prices, rising inflation. And the chemical manufacturers were angry at Nixon for having triangulated them as a problem while he was this reluctant environmental president. Nixon was a weather vane. He was reading environmental legislation and heard the demands for it. He wanted to be the one to give that to them. John Erlichman, of Watergate notoriety, was an effective land and water environmental lawyer in Seattle. He was doing environmental work before others. Nixon basically asked him to do it, just to make sure Nixon got credit for it. …
But this idea of being a Republican and a conservationist started to die in 1973. The chemical industry felt hyper-regulated and they worried there’d be no end to it. The Endangered Species Act worked. But there was a revolt against the environment. To cut to the chase, if I went to Galveston and said, “Let’s get Galveston Bay cleaned up and have oyster and shrimp back!” I’d get cheered. But you talk about climate change and you lose half your audience instantly. It’s become a thing where you have to be on the side of energy or the environment. Whereas we used to have Republicans like Howard Baker, a Republican from Tennessee, who was a huge environmentalist. And a powerful Republican. But with conservation, we don’t have that variety anymore.
Q: I’m sure people will think the mustachetwirling villain in all this are those creating pollutants. But dam building — category non-beaver — really comes across as a backward construct.
A: I love FDR, and we needed the Grand Coulee Dam and things like the Tennessee Valley Authority for electricity. But those became part of pork barrel politics, to build dams in every district. And they’ve ravaged the Colorado River. They destroyed the most beautiful of western rivers. The Missouri River as it comes into Kansas City is like a sewage canal. We’ve over-dammed and channelized our rivers. The Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation have a greed that knows no end. They want big funding for projects all the time. Some of those projects were wasteful and detrimental to the regions.
Q: This has become something parallel to the Caro series on Lyndon Johnson. You now have four or five books about America and the environment in the 20th century. I worry the next one could be grim.
A: It is grim. There are moments after this book. There’s some heroic work by (Jimmy) Carter, you have (Bill) Clinton with Bruce Babbit working to save the Grand Escalante National Monument. Climate change becomes an issue, the fossil fuel issue chasing us down and running us over. What do we do? Climate change is a problem, and we need to get engaged locally. Go work to clean up Buffalo Bayou. Help Galveston Bay. Help sea turtle efforts on Padre. It doesn’t all have to be climate change as the boogeyman. We can do things that are upbeat, family-friendly and peerdriven in a way that feels different. But we do have to be engaged about land and water protection and species survival. If everybody does something at the local level, these little movements locally will connect into a mighty fist that demands we do better. That’s how we get a greener tomorrow.
Q: The language of it does feel like a problem.
A: If you go at climate change on your laptop, you’re going to be beaten to a pulp. The problem is planetary. We can do certain things, but if China and India aren’t adhering to them, it becomes selfdefeating. I always ask people to just take care of what’s around them. I ask students when we talk about “Walden,” What’s your Walden? What is the place in the natural world that means the most to you? That brought you joy and laughter. It could be a ranch outside of Katy, or going to Big Bend. It could be a boat in Galveston Bay. If one of those places talks to you, donate, join a conservation group, monitor what’s happening online, sign a petition. Give back to a natural world that has given us everything.