ENTANGLED ECOLOGIES 169
the scope of civic environmental activism. We can see the result in en-
vironmental activism surrounding Energiewende (Energy Transition [to
renewable sources]), a political-administrative mega-project that leaves
scant room for enraged citizens. Protest takes place mostly in the form of
local opposition against specifi c projects. It takes considerable knowledge
and insider contacts to talk about renewable energy nowadays, and few
average citizens can muster the time and expertise to join these debates.
A Diff erent Life
Contemporary environmental history has mostly focused on the political
sphere. But such a perspective looks only at fragments of what the envi-
ronment has really meant since 1970. Environmentalism brought people
to reconsider virtually every facet of everyday life. “Green thinking” in-
fl uenced food choices and consumer routines in supermarkets—at least
for those who still dared to enter these cathedrals of consumerism rather
than the local organic co-op. Daily routines bear the marks of environ-
mentalism, which may account for the movement’s remarkable resilience,
which is anything but self-evident. As Christopher Rootes has noted, the
environmental movement is “the great survivor among the new social
movements that arose in and since the 1960s.”^92
Dreams of a diff erent life are a crucial part of contemporary environ-
mental history. Yet historians who seek to write such narratives are con-
strained by two factors. First, they face a desolate state of research even
by the generous standards of environmental history. A cultural history of
the environment, as Michael Bess has done for France, has not yet been
written for the German case, though the endeavor would not lack for in-
teresting topics.^93 The rising popularity of muesli and whole grain bread,
for example, says quite a bit about German sensitivities in the late twen-
tieth century. Second, a German-German perspective presents peculiar
challenges, as consumption and lifestyles diff ered greatly between East
and West. Whereas West Germans tried to save energy in the wake of the
oil crises by installing thermostats and double-glazed windows, East Ger-
mans simply opened windows in well-heated but poorly insulated rooms.
Similarly, restaurants in the West off ered a taste of new culinary worlds,
while charcoal grills were fi red up along the streets in East Germany after
the Wende, a culinary monoculture even for those who like Thuringian
bratwurst.
German critics of consumption could draw upon older intellectual tra-
ditions. It is quite striking, for example, that Vance Packard’s American
bestsellers quickly made their way across the pond to West Germany. In