Where Did the Sustainability Movement Come From?

NAS's Glenn Ricketts traces the history of the sustainability movement, now dominant as a campus ideology, in a major article that will appear in a forthcoming sustainability-themed issue of our journal Academic Questions. His piece examines the roots of the movement, from the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring to Murray Bookchin's theories of "social ecology" to the emergence of urban atheists' religion of choice to an "interconnected" web of political and spiritual ideology. This important article gives historical context for an idea that has gripped America's colleges and universities. If you've ever heard about or been affected by sustainability mania and wondered, "How did we get here?" this essay is an excellent reference point.