ABSTRACT
In social history individuals may matter because of their critical ideas, but they need movements and organizations to become influential. Some people make a difference in world history because they become aware of certain dangers very early. Modern technology has often raised expectations, but it took people longer to notice, and think through, the negative consequences, such as the formation of smog in cities and the effects of the pesticide DDT (dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane) on wildlife in water. Physicist Harrison Brown warned of such dangers in his book The Challenge of Man’s Future (1954) and biologist Rachel Carson did so in her Silent Spring (1962). However, when most people ignore their warnings, early awareness does not mean that these individuals are taken seriously. To become influential, critical ideas should be elaborated further and attract support. During the 1960s larger groups of young people and critical scientists began to question the assumption that nature could bear any burden human beings might place on it and set up organizations with identifiable spokespersons. Canadian journalist Robert Hunter changed from being a reporter to becoming an activist after his adventurous journey to the Gulf of Alaska, where the US was planning nuclear tests in 1971, and founded the activist nongovernmental organization Greenpeace International, which set off for locations where large-scale, but low-visibility, environmental abuses were taking
place, to bring them to the world’s attention through publicity stunts. In 1972 Donella and Dennis Meadows and their colleagues from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology modeled for the Club of Rome the use of natural resources and announced that the “limits to growth” would be reached within a century.
