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wanted their children safe, their drinking water clean, and the ability to enjoy
natural beauty on outdoor vacations. There was also a new public conscious-
ness of the environment as a living system, or a “web of life” in a wider eco-
system. Those who made money from the extraction of natural resources or
production that polluted that nation’s air and water had a much different per-
ception of the natural world. They viewed the environment as a source of
commodities to be extracted and sold or a physical landscape to be manipu-
lated and abused. On the other hand, the American people became well
aware that human actions like nuclear testing and DDT-spraying had complex
ecological affects, the potential for severe consequences for earth, air, and
water, and, most importantly, could harm human health. The satirical folk
singer Tom Lehrer even wrote a song about it, “If you visit American city/You
will find it very pretty/Just two things of which you must beware/Don’t drink
the water and don’t breathe the air.” The soul singer Marvin Gaye likewise
wrote “Mercy, Mercy Me” (The Ecology Song) to chronicle the destruction
of the environment, “Where did all the blue skies go?/Poison is the wind that
blows from the North and South and East/... Oil Wasted on the ocean and
upon our seas, fish full of mercury/... Radiation under ground and in the
sky/Animals and birds who live nearby are dying/Oh mercy, mercy me.”
The new awareness of the role of human actions in altering, and damaging,
the environment, along with a realization that business interests had made
environmental policy formed the backbone of the new environmental move-
ment. By the end of the 1960s, a diverse group of people concerned with
various aspects of environmental protection fused into the 1970s environmen-
tal movement. Its members consisted of members of previously separate
group interests including pollution abatement, radiation control, pesticide con-
trol, nature preservation, and national park preservation for recreational uses.
The new environmentalists included traditional groups like the Sierra Club, the
Wilderness Society, the National Audubon Society, sportsman’s groups like Ducks
Unlimited and the conservative National Wildlife Federation. It grew to include
civic groups such as garden clubs and the League of Women Voters, college
students, and even commercial interests who wanted federal funding for
waterworks or tourism. Together, they formed a broad environmental move-
ment that demanded stronger federal policies to protect the environment.
They also demanded that the government represent interests beyond the
major environmental foes, the capitalist producers.