Green Persuasion

"Offers a history of Take Pride in America, a program launched during the Reagan administration to encourage citizens to assume greater responsibility for the care of public lands through voluntary efforts. Working with the Interior Department, the Advertising Council promoted the new initiative with public service announcements featuring celebrity spokespersons Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, and Louis Gossett, Jr. The program continued as part of President George H. W. Bush's Thousand Points of Light initiative. Although the Clinton administration mothballed Take Pride, it reemerged during George W. Bush's presidency and continued as a modest effort through President Obama's two terms. The book begins by surveying the role of advertising in American society, paying particular attention to the development of the Ad Council and its public service campaigns on environmental causes, such as the Smokey Bear fire prevention campaign and the "Crying Indian" Keep America Beautiful campaign. It then examines the pervasive role of voluntarism over time and the changing nature of environmental politics, notably the diminishment of the bipartisan nature of environmental policy after 1980. These themes came together in the Take Pride in America initiative, which the Reagan administration had devised as a means to blunt the heated criticism of its environmental record. The book then traces the evolution of Take Pride; how it was organized and promoted, why motorized recreational enthusiasts were attracted to the program, and what the initiative says about how Americans argue over the care of the nation's landed inheritance"--