Surviving the 1970s: The Case of the Friends of the Earth

How did environmental politics survive the de-regulation, economic crisis, and nativism of the 1970s? What compromises did environmental activists make? This paper engages with these questions through the fractious history of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth (FOE). Founded in 1969, FOE’s first decade illuminates how the political and economic changes of the 1970s impacted, limited, and ultimately gave shape to the parameters of mainstream environmentalism.