Landscapes of Conflict: The Oregon Story, 1940-2000 by William G. Robbins

Abstract

Reviews Landscapes ofConflict: The Oregon Story, 1940-2000 ByWilliam G.Robbins University ofWashington Press, Seattle, 2004. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. 416 pages. $35.00 cloth. Reviewed by Richard W. Judd University of Maine, Orono Ever since David Brower taught us to thinkglobally and act locally,environmental historians have pondered the relation between politics of place and the national themes that make up the environmental movement. In his pioneering Beauty, Health, and Permanence (1987), Samuel P. Hays addressed the history of environmentalism as a national phenom enon, but in facthis book is mostly a surveyof place-specific campaigns. By contrast,Robbins begins at the state level and follows the ripples of political dissent outward into the national mainstream. With roughly half of Oregon's land base in the federal domain, this seems an appropriate place to begin exploring relations between the global and the local. Robbins began his history of theOregon environmentwith Landscapes of Promise (1997), which ends at 1940. Picking up from there, Landscapes ofConflict asserts the same bold themes: conservation is a clash of essentially economic interests;Edenic visions and tech nological optimism are dashed on the rocks of corporate resistance and a spiral of unintended consequences. Although Robbins never clearly explains his methodology, his book stands as a model for doing environmental history on a different scale and with differentpremises. His focus on one state provides an integrated narrative of the environmentalmovement and clarifiestherelationbetween seemingly separate battles over fish,forests,and other values. Robbins begins with Oregon's optimistic outlook at the end of World War II and distills from thisexpansionarymood a sense of anxiety brought on by environmental problems linked to agriculture, suburbs, logging,and pollution. Threatened by a gauntlet ofdams and irrigation works, salmon declined in the postwar years, becoming the most visible indicatorofOregon s coming environmental battles.Agriculture and forestryfollowed similar trajectories.Bolstered by rural electrification,irrigationprojects, land grant research, and new chemical applicants, farmersfaced a bright future,but field-burning resulted inpublic protestsand awkward compro mises. Rapid timber liquidation under theguise of encouraging more vigorous second-growth forestsbrought environmental and economic dislocations. In both industries, concern about chemical sprayingmirrored national trends following publication ofRachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962).Despite theseand otherproblems, agricultural experts and foresters maintained a steady faith in technological solutions. Robbins gives thishistory a human quality by weaving it around two legendary figures: Senator Richard Neuberger and Governor Tom McCall. Both moved into politics following careers in journalism, and both gained national reputations for their environmental stands. Neither was absolutely consistent, however, and Robbins casts thisambivalence as a central feature of Oregon's environmental record. Suc cessbrought national recognition,but problems persist, a legacy of land and water use over the past 150years. Robbins ends with a discussion ofOregons response tounplanned growth,cul Reviews 669 minating in thepath-breaking S.B. 100,a legisla tive resolution to McCall's famous admonition to "come visit us again and again_But for heaven s sake don't come here to live."Despite repeated challenges, S.B. 100 remained,Robbins says, the nation's only truly comprehensive sys tem for managing growth. Even at this focused level,Robbins's history is selective; he treatsonly inpassing the recre ational forms of environmental politics that emerged inwilderness and wild-river protec tion and in"green city"campaigns. This reflects his understanding that economic imprints dominate the landscape. While true, this nar row explanatory structureneglects the cultural factors thatmade Oregon unique nationwide in its commitment to quality of life.Still, this may be theonlyway tohandle the complicated mix of global economic forces and statewide politics, which Robbins does brilliantly and with surprising balance, given his passionate commitment to the environmental integrityof his home state. Landscapes ofConflict ends as itbegins ? on an ambivalent note? with declining support for land-use planning, rivers still laced with toxins, and timberharvestsmoving toward an uncertain future. What worries Robbins most is a generation ofOregonians unfamiliar with these earlier struggles and no charismatic Tom McCall to invoke their legacy.Indeed, thisfear is sharedby environmentalists across thenation: if sense ofplace determines our collective respon sibility for the land, then Robbins's concerns ring true.Yet, history teaches us toview trends like these as historically...