A certain cultural environmentalism was the natural accompaniment of this rural hankering. It was not the mix of science, ethics, and politics that we call environmentalism today and which, back then, was only just emerging under the name of “ecology.” It was more a Romantic way of life, in the sense that William Wordsworth (“Nature never did betray the heart that loved her”) was Romantic. Drawing from Western culture’s deep well of ideas about simplicity and authenticity, it was, while it lasted, something you could partake of even in a truck or on a motorcycle. It meant natural ingredients
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