The Torrey Canyon Disaster, Everyday Life, and the ‘Greening’ of Britain
Cooper, T; Green, A
Date: 26 September 2016
Journal
Environmental History
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Publisher DOI
Abstract
This article challenges the predominant narrative of the rise of modern
environmentalism that supports much of the historiography on environmental ideas and
movements. Through a study of the effects of the Torrey Canyon disaster of 1967, we show
that everyday life is a vital mediator of environmental catastrophes, and has played a ...
This article challenges the predominant narrative of the rise of modern
environmentalism that supports much of the historiography on environmental ideas and
movements. Through a study of the effects of the Torrey Canyon disaster of 1967, we show
that everyday life is a vital mediator of environmental catastrophes, and has played a crucial
role in rendering ambiguous popular attitudes towards the impact of disasters on the natural
world. Using oral interview evidence, neglected by much environmental history, we trace the
connections between the experience of the disaster and the contradictory ways in which this
experience was or, more commonly, was not translated into environmentalist sensibility. We
study the ways in which everyday concerns about economic insecurity created antagonistic
understandings of the disaster that both magnified its unfortunate impact and complicated its
subsequent meaning. We argue that attitudes towards the spill and its effects on nature were
often contradictory. On the one hand there was a powerful association with the suffering of
wildlife affected by the spill. Yet simultaneously many of those interviewed rejected explicit
environmental activism, or drew only weak lines of connection between green ideas and their
own experience of environmental disaster. We suggest that everyday environmental discourse
should be seen as more geographically specific, ambiguous, and self-aware than that which is
traditionally associated with the conservation movement, and that oral history can be a vital
tool in developing a more sophisticated understanding of the complex social nature of
modern environmentalism.
History
Collections of Former Colleges
Item views 0
Full item downloads 0