Not easy being green

It was a battle to save a cherished piece of nature from the forces of economic growth. Preservationists formed groups to present their case, and public figures across the country spoke up about the matter. Yet in the end, industry and commerce triumphed, changing the natural landscape.

The sun rises in England's Lake District

Offshore oil drilling? Mountain-top coal mining? Actually, this was the controversy in the 1870s over Thirlmere, a picturesque body of water in Britain's Lake District. The city of Manchester, 100 miles away, wanted to dam Thirlmere and create a reservoir to meet its growing water needs. This infuriated local activists and generated national debate.

If this story sounds familiar, it should: The fight over Thirlmere created a ''template for subsequent environmental struggles'' we still see today, writes Harriet Ritvo, the Arthur Conner Professor of History at MIT. Ritvo's new book, The Dawn of Green: Manchester, Thirlmere, and Modern Environmentalism, published this fall by the University of Chicago Press, explores this episode and its long-term impact.

Thirlmere, Ritvo asserts, was the first political battle over nature that involved most of the elements we see in modern environmental confrontations: Most opponents of the dam were not locals directly affected by the project, but instead conservation-minded activists making the novel argument that the public could claim a kind of property right on nature. ''Thirlmere was the beginning of a sense that the public could fight to preserve the resources it enjoyed,'' says Ritvo. ''It is striking how similar the positions held then are to the positions people espouse today.''

Yet Thirlmere also contains a jarring message for environmentalist readers today: Their side lost. As someone teaching environmental history, says Ritvo, ''It is very sobering.''

From England to California