Citizen Environmentalists

Summary

Using a case study of environmental debates about air pollution in Pittsburgh during the late 1960s and early 1970s, James Longhurst examines larger trends in citizen activism outside party politics, linking those trends with the rights revolution of the late twentieth century. He draws upon journalistic accounts, archival documents, legal records, and interviews to explore the actions and arguments of GASP (Group Against Smog and Pollution). This group of environmental activists gained access to political power through claims to citizenship and scientific expertise, supported by the organizational skills, social capital, and maternal rhetoric of middle-class women. Once they gained entry to a newly confrontational policy process, the group engaged in furious public debates over implementation, enforcement, and employment, all amid the decline of Pittsburgh's industrial economy. The grassroots actions of GASP, and many other groups like it across the nation, show that new developments in policymaking, concepts of citizenship, and the longstanding tradition of middle-class women's civic activism did more to drive the creation of the modern environmental movement than did changes in environmental philosophy.

Author Biography

JAMES LONGHURST is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin--La Crosse.

Preface: The Citizen Environmentalists
List of Acronyms and Abbreviations
Power to the Public Hearing
The Importance of Citizenship to the Environmental Movement
Choosing Citizenship
Citizen Standing
The Language of Participatory Democracy
Public Hearings and Dialectical Relationships
The League of Women Voters and Public Hearings
The Smoky City
Public Involvement in Controlling Air Pollution in Pittsburgh
Making the City Smoky
Responding to Smoke and Pollution before 1969
Regulatory Success without the Public
Getting in the Door: gasp and Air Pollution Control after 1969
Citizen Standing, gasp, and the Variance Board in 1970
"I BELONG HERE!"
Citizen Environmentalism in Pittsburgh and the United States
The People and Organization of GASP
Representative Membership and Social Capital
Increases in Citizen Environmentalism across the Nation
In Defense of nimby: On the Subject of Names
Mothers of Urban Skies
Environmental Education and the Rhetoric of Women's Activism
Pittsburgh and the Women of GASP
Flour Power and gasp's Educational Mission
The Language of Maternalism
"Where the Rubber Meets the Road"
Implementation and the Rhetoric of Scientific Expertise at the Variance Board, 1970-1975
The Devil in the Details
Actors on Stage
The Gendered Language of Expertise and Professionalism
Reaching the Limits of Local Control
Citizens and the Courts
United States Steel, Jones & Laughlin, and the Limits of Local Control
Pittsburgh's Industrial Landscape
The Clairton Saga
The Language of Job Loss, U.S. Steel, and Jones & Laughlin
Conclusion
The Significance of the Citizen Environmentalists for the Modern Environmental Movement, in Pittsburgh's Experiment, and in GASP
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations follow page 111
Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.

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