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Articles by Joseph E. Taylor III

Joseph E. Taylor III is a Canada Research Chair in environmental history at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. He is the author of Making Salmon: An Environmental History of the Northwest Fisheries Crisis and is completing a book on recreation titled Pilgrims of the Vertical: Rock Climbing and Modern Environmental Culture.

Featured Article

Pretty, yes, but what about the people?

Photo: National Park Service.

North Americans love their heroes, and environmentalists are no exception. The hall of fame includes some of the biggest hitters from our nation’s past: John Muir, David McTaggart, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Paul Watson, David Brower, Rachel Carson, and Edward Abbey, to name just a few. Every Earth Day, speakers invoke these legends, yet there are also the lesser lights of the green pantheon: Alice Hamilton, the scientist who studied industrial lead poisoning and founded the modern discipline of occupational health; Crystal Eastman, the settlement-house worker who brought attention to the dilapidated housing of Pittsburgh’s working classes; and Lois Gibbs, the homemaker-turned-activist who decried the poisoning of a blue-collar suburb in upstate New York called Love Canal.

What united the latter, unsung group and others like them was a commitment to the dispossessed and the poor. In contrast, some of the most venerated conservationists and environmentalists demonstrated a decidedly misanthropic streak. Therein lies a startling and unsett... Read more