How, for example, does one turn a swamp into a wetland? How do you muster the support to turn waste places into sanctuaries? Obviously you need hydrologists, life scientists, regional planners, and legislation, but you need imagination, too. It took a revolution in public imagination for wetland protection to gain the ground it has. Even though those gains are perpetually in danger of setbacks, this is one of the big environmental success stories of the late twentieth century.

It’s a matter of historical record that works of creative environmental writing, like Henry David Thoreau's narrative of starting life anew at Walden, have inspired many readers: from the father of modern wilderness preservation movement, John Muir, to the Save Walden Woods and Restore the North Woods campaigns of today. Such works of environmental imagination have the power to activate four kinds of engagement: they have the power to connect you vicariously with the experience of others—non-human others, as well as human beings. Environmental imaging can also take you to places you've never been and never otherwise would go; it can direct thought to alternative futures; and it can effect your own sense of caring for the physical world, making it feel more or less precious, endangered, or disposable.

Likewise, a recent study of political fallout from environmental disasters found that a key reason why the Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska's southern coast in 1990 moved Congress to pass the Oil Pollution Act (after prior cleanup bills had been tied up for two decades) was that television literally brought home to millions of Americans images of Alaskaæa wild, pristine, isolated, scenically beautiful place, largely untouched by humansæthat had been grossly violated and threatened by this catastrophe. Why was it that in the 1970s, the downscale residential subdivision of Love Canal near Niagara Falls became the poison community poster child that helped trigger the environmental justice movement? The key, again, is the power of imagery. Why was it that Rachel Carson's environmental classic, Silent Spring, became the stimulus to environmental activism and other highly regarded books on the same topic did not? The decisive thing was the combination of careful research, deep conviction, and literary imagination: the eye for the telling story and the unforgettable image.

Art and imagination can matter. They have an indispensable place in forming public attitudes about the environment and have an indispensable place in environmental activism. They can also produce concrete results very different from what the author intended. The most famous example, Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, a muckraking exposé of the Chicago meat-packing industry at the turn of the century, got the immediate attention of President Teddy Roosevelt and led to the fast passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Beef Inspection Act. These were not the reforms that the author had hoped for: he wrote, "I aimed at the public's heart, and by accident, I hit it in the stomach."