Early environmentalists encouraged emulation of Indigenous peoples and enriching the natural ecology with slow patient effort - Chapman alone planted millions of apple trees throughout the United States. The movement had little or no explicit political character. It was mostly aesthetic. It had no central doctrine. Most of its proponents did not know each other, but created a powerful discourse that influenced people strongly at the time.
Many historians point to the important philosophical and activist roles played by John Muir in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. In 1892, Muir was the leader in the founding of the Sierra Club. As well, Forester and ecologist Aldo Leopold both founded the Wilderness Society in 1935, and wrote a classic of nature observation and ethical philosophy, A Sand County Almanac, published in 1949.
Several books after the middle of the twentieth century contributed to the rise of American environmentalism (as distinct from the longer-established conservation movement), especially among college and university students and the more literate public. One was the publication of the first textbook on Ecology, Fundamentals of Ecology, by Eugene Odum and Howard Odum, in 1953. Another was the appearance of the best-seller Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, in 1962. Her book brought about a whole new interpretation on pesticides by exposing their hamful effects in nature. From this book many began referring to Carson as the "mother of the environmental movement". Another influential development was a 1965 lawsuit, Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference v. Federal Power Commission, opposing the construction of a power plant on Storm King Mountain, which is said to have given birth to modern United States environmental law. The wide popularity of The Whole Earth Catalogs, starting in 1968, was quite influential among the younger, hands-on, activist generation of the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, in addition to opposing environmental degradation and protecting wilderness, an increased focus on coexisting with natural biodiversity has appeared, a strain that is apparent in the movement for Sustainable agriculture and in the concept of Reconciliation ecology.
Fewer environmental laws have been passed in the last decade as corporations and other conservative interests have increased their influence over American politics. Corporate cooperation against environmental lobbyists has been organized by the Wise Use group. At the same time, many environmentalists have been turning toward other means of persuasion, such as working with business, community, and other partners to promote Sustainable development.
Much environmental activism is directed towards Conservation, as well as the prevention or elimination of pollution. However, conservation movements, ecology movements, peace movements, green parties, green- and eco-anarchists often subscribe to very different ideologies, while supporting the same goals as those who call themselves “environmentalists”. To outsiders, these groups or factions can appear to be indistinguishable.
As human population and industrial activity continue to increase, environmentalists often find themselves in serious conflict with those who believe that human and industrial activities should not be overly regulated or restricted, such as some libertarians.
Environmentalists often clash with others, particularly “corporate interests,” over issues of the management of natural resources, like in the case of the atmosphere as a “carbon dump”, the focus of Climate change, and Global warming controversy. They usually seek to protect commonly owned or unowned resources for future generations.
Those who take issue with new untested technologies are more precisely known, especially in Europe, as political ecologists. They usually seek, in contrast, to preserve the integrity of existing ecologies and ecoregions, and in general are more pessimistic about human “management”.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus wrote, "Today environmentalism is just another special interest. Evidence for this can be found in its concepts, its proposals, and its reasoning. What stands out is how arbitrary environmental leaders are about what gets counted and what doesn't as 'environmental.' Most of the movement's leading thinkers, funders, and advocates do not question their most basic assumptions about who we are, what we stand for, and what it is that we should be doing." Their essay was followed by a speech in San Francisco called "Is Environmentalism Dead?" by former Sierra Club President, Adam Werbach, who argued for the evolution of environmentalism into a more expansive, relevant and powerful progressive politics.
These "post-environmental movement" thinkers argue that the ecological crises the human species faces in the 21st century are qualitatively different from the problems the environmental movement was created to address in the 1960s and 1970s. Climate change and habitat destruction, they argue, are global, more complex, and demand far deeper transformations of the economy, the culture and political life. The consequence of environmentalism's outdated and arbitrary definition, they argue, is political irrelevancy.