As we approach the twenty-first century, a new phase in the environmental movement -- I call it the "Fourth Wave" -- has burst into flower. In the past year, this grassroots movement has spawned a tidal wave of referendums placed on ballots by citizens groups across the US. Among the results: Corporations that pollute the waters of the Florida Everglades must now pay for the cleanup, and new regulations for hunters in such taditional pro-hunting states as Alaska. Because of their sheer number and success, the referendums sent a message to lawmakers nationwide. The environmental health of the planet would no longer be determined by distamt politicians in Washington, but by local people, organized at the grassroots. In a sense, 1996 was a watershed year for the Fourth Wave. There were so many referendums on state ballots the transfer of power was clear: In the Age of the Fourth Wave, citizens have wrested the fate of the environment from legislators and into their own hands.

Of course, the Fourth Wave has not washed over us without precedent. It is, in many ways, a consequence of the waves that have come before. The First Wave was the thrust by President Theodore Roosevelt, the Sierra Club, and other national organizations and personalities to save large parcels of U.S. land from development for future use by people -- be that use enjoyment of wilderness or exploitation of minerals and timber. Almost every protected western old-growth forest was set aside by Congress as part of this Wave.

Wave Two began in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, which challenged the government's land stewardship. For the first time, environmentalists began to speak out against the negative side effects of modern chemicals. The Second Wave questioned the idea of progress at any cost. As members of local Audubon and wildlife societies, Second-Wavers sued local governments, boycotted products produced by polluters, and mounted demonstrations at shareholder meetings. As a result of their efforts, pesticides such as DDT were banned.

Close on the heals of Wave Two, Wave Three introduced an even more radical thought: Not only could we protect the environment to save ourselves, we could save it for its own sake. A legacy of this era was the Wilderness Act of 1965, passed by national legislators to preserve large tracts of land for posterity.

The Fourth Wave started as a wavelet. Evident first in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was propelled by people from ordinary walks of life who came face to face with the effects of large-scale toxic dumping in their own neighborhood. Ignored by large environmental groups, Buffalo housewife Lois Gibbs organized her neighbors and sued local government and local polluters to clean her neighborhood of the toxic chemicals. That neighborhood just happened to be Love Canal. Suddenly people trusted no one but themselves to take action.

Now, with the ballot intiatives of the 1996 elections, the Fourth Wave has broken through to the mainstream. According to Americans for the Environment, a Washington D.C.- based nonpartisan educational organization, even though only 24 states allow initiatives, a record 243 of them were placed on state ballots in 1996. (Many more were raised on city and county levels.) Thirty-nine state initiatives covered environmental issues. The only other issue to come close was tax reform.

Roy Morgan, President of Americans For The Environment, says that "In the past half dozen years, more petitions are being circulated to get initiatives on the ballot, more are qualifying, and more money has been spent than compared to the previous 25 years combined." A consistent theme of the 1996 ballot initiatives was to force polluters (private or government) to clean up or limit the destructive impacts of their actions. For example, in Montana, environmentalists tried to force new or expanding hardrock mines to remove the pollutants they created. Despite being out-spent by the mining industry by $2.5 million to $300,000 (an 8-to-1 ratio) environmentalists lost by only 4%. In Florida, voters approved--by 68% to 32%--an initiative to force water polluters to pay for the clean-up of pollutants they put in the Everglades. Compare these results, especially in Montana, a pro-mining state, to Congress's continued failure to reinstitute the Superfund Law, which basically asks polluters to do the same thing--clean up after themselves.

The electorate also demanded wild spaces such as parks and forests be kept as they are. On the city and local county level alone, in supposedly conservative states like Missouri and Arkansas, ballot initiatives to save local land from development with sales-tax set-asides also won, despite Congress's current anti-tax bent. An anti-hunting-and-trapping mood also prevailed. From Alaska to Massachusetts, five of seven states passed initiatives to limit trapping and hunting techniques.

Large and small groups on both sides of the environmental fence are recognizing that future battles will be won through ballot initiatives initiated by local citizens groups, and are willing to invest time and money to help them. In 1996, The Humane Society of the United States in Washington D.C. ran five victorious campaigns in seven states, spending only $500,000, as compared to the $4.5 million spent by opposition groups like the pro-hunting Safari Club. Spending on ballot initiatives is only going to go up -- and such spending is unregulated. Four years ago, corporations and trade organizations spent $18 million to try to defeat 32 environmental initiatives. Last year, sugar companies spent over $20 million to defeat the penny-a-pound tax to clean up the Everglades. This came to about $100 a vote.

But don't be frightened by the budget or size of your enemy. Remember, although last year corporations out-spent environmentalists, sometimes by as much as sixty-four to one, 70% of the environmental ballot initiatives won vs. 40% percent of all others.