The Malthusian moment : global population growth and the birth of American environmentalism / Thomas Robertson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Robertson, Thomas, 1967-

Series:

Studies in modern science, technology, and the environment

Studies in Modern Science, Technology, and the Environment

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Overpopulation--History.

Overpopulation.

Environmentalism--United States--History.

Environmentalism.

Physical Description:

xix, 291 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick : Rutgers University Press, c2012.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is often cited as the founding text of the U.S. environmental movement, in The Malthusian Moment Thomas Robertson locates the origins of modern American environmentalism in twentieth-century adaptations of Thomas Malthus’s concerns about population growth. For many environmentalists, managing population growth became the key to unlocking the most intractable problems facing Americans after World War II—everything from war and the spread of communism overseas to poverty, race riots, and suburban sprawl at home. Weaving together the international and the domestic in creative new ways, The Malthusian Moment charts the explosion of Malthusian thinking in the United States from World War I to Earth Day 1970, then traces the just-as-surprising decline in concern beginning in the mid-1970's. In addition to offering an unconventional look at World War II and the Cold War through a balanced study of the environmental movement’s most contentious theory, the book sheds new light on some of the big stories of postwar American life: the rise of consumption, the growth of the federal government, urban and suburban problems, the civil rights and women’s movements, the role of scientists in a democracy, new attitudes about sex and sexuality, and the emergence of the “New Right.”

Contents:

Malthusianism, eugenics, and carrying capacity in the interwar period

War and nature: Fairfield Osborn, William Vogt, and the birth of global ecology

Abundance in a sea of poverty : quality and quantity of life

"Feed 'em or fight 'em: population and resources on the global frontier during the Cold War

The "Chinification" of American cities, suburbs, and wilderness

Paul Ehrlich, the 1960s, and the population bomb

Strange bedfellows: population politics, 1968-1970

We're all in the same boat!?: The disuniting of spaceship earth

Ronald Reagan, the new right, and population growth.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 233-283) and index.

ISBN:

1-283-55088-1

9786613863331

0-8135-5335-0

OCLC:

809834567