Leslie Savan on Slam Dunk? Why?; Environmentalist/Conservationist

[Laurence Horn]

Quoth Barry:
>
>ENVIRONMENTALIST/CONSERVATIONIST
>...
>The Sierra Club endorses candidates, most all of them Democrats. I was sent
>a survey of about forty incredibly complicated questions. Some of them don't
>even apply for the position I'm running for. Others are a bit silly. (Does my
>campaign literature use soy-based ink?)
>...
>I'd like to research the word "environmentalist"--an old NYC  Republican
>named Teddy Roosevelt was one, or was that "conservationist"?--but I
>can't find
>anything from Teddy's time in office.
>...
>...
>(OED)
>
>environmentalist, n. (and a.)
>A. n. One who believes in or promotes the  principles or precepts of
>environmentalism; also, one who is concerned with the  preservation
>of the environment
>(from pollution,  etc.).

--these being two quite different senses, given the earlier
prevailing sense (with cites back to 1923)  of "environmentalism" as
'A theory of the primary influence of environment on the development
of a person or group', i.e. someone on the nurture rather than nature
side of the debate, with the newer sense of  'Concern with the
preservation of the environment, esp. from the effects of pollution;
the politics or policies associated with this' added only in the 1993
update, with the first cite from 1973.  All the below cites for
'environmentalist' except for the last one (or possibly two) relate
to the 'nurturist' sense, not the 'conservationist' one.

Larry

>
>1916 Amer. Jrnl. Sociol.  XXI. 628 The environmentalist will often agree with
>the  anti-environmentalist that certain changes in a culture may be due..to
>certain  cultural features..but, objects the environmentalist, these cultural
>features  were, in their turn, produced by the physical environment. 1925 F.
>THOMAS Environmental Basis of Society xi. 288 The environmentalist holds, for
>example, that the snow house of  the Eskimo is determined by the surrounding
>Arctic environment. 1936 Nature 26 Sept. 530/1 Whether  our outlook be mainly
>that of the eugenist or that of the environmentalist, we  must not 'cease from
>mental fight' until we have..'built Jerusalem in England's  green and pleasant
>land'. 1940 _R. S. WOODWORTH_
>(http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-w3.html#r-s-woodworth)
>Psychol. (ed. 12) vii. 225 The age-long dispute between the
>hereditarians and the  environmentalists. 1941 _J. S.  HUXLEY_
>(http://dictionary.oed.com/help/bib/oed2-h4.html#j-s-huxley)
>Uniqueness of Man ii. 39
>Sentimental environmentalists, who adhered to the crudest form of
>Lamarckism. 1959
>Archit.  Rev. CXXV. 304/2 The people are the  Environmentalists... Their means
>of expression are the relationships between  buildings and between spaces, and
>the element in which they work is time. 1970 New  Yorker 9 May 33/2 Dr.
>Robert N. Rickles, a  thirty-four-year-old chemist and an
>environmentalist,..took
>the helm of the  city's Department of Air Resources last month. 1970 Nature 15
>Aug. 655/2 The project  to build a supersonic transport has run into renewed
>complaints from the  environmentalists.
>...