It is not uncommon in popular media to trace the first inklings of environmental activism to the first photos of earth from space and the accompanying realization that we live on a finite and fragile planet. Many have drawn inspiration from the accounts of astronauts such as Edgar Mitchell (“My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity”), Alexi Leonov (“The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic”), and James Irwin (“That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of God and the love of God”) (Kelley [1988] 1991: 24, 52, 38). It is perhaps no coincidence that the first Earth Day celebration in 1970 followed closely on the heels of these first forays into space.

Awareness of environmental scarcity, however, far predates the first space explorations or the counter-cultural environmental movements of the late twentieth century. By the first Earth Day it had long been clear that human cultures were on an unsustainable course. In the postwar period the growth of the interstate system and urban planning schemes built around this new individualized form of transportation had contributed significant amounts of carbon to the atmosphere.