Postwar Consumer Capitalism
and the Environment

Earth, Wind, and Fire:
Nature and History in America

From Industrial to Consumer Capitalism

New consumer goods in the 1920s

Automobiles, refrigerators, electric mixers, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, water heaters

First products made from nonbiodegradable synthetic materials: cellophane and Bakelite

Problem of durable goods

1924: planned obsolescence (light bulbs)

1924: regular changes in styles and features (GM’s automobiles)

1920s: disposable products (safety razors)

1924: White Castle, the first fast food restaurant

Advertising is the key to selling sex, status, and self-gratification

Movies, mass media, national radio

Consumer capitalism speeds transfer of money, increasing income

Consumer Capitalism and Waste

Postwar Air Pollution Crisis    

Donora, Pennsylvania

Halloween 1948

21 die

One-third of city ill

London’s “Killer Fog”

December 1952: 4000 dead

Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River burns

Energy Transition: from coal to petroleum

Rise in demand for oil

Texas and Pennsylvania: gushers

Oily sheen on land, streams, forests

Venting & loss of cheap natural gas

1922-34 1,250,000,000 cubic feet/day

1950s: 1/2 of all gas burned at wellhead

Postwar development

Prosperity fuels consumerism

FHA & GI Bill fuel urban sprawl

Cheap, inefficient housing

Flooding, erosion

Septic tank pollution

Freeways, interstate highways

Era of automobile

Cities rip up mass transit tracks, buy buses

Urban Sprawl: Levittown, Long Island, N.Y.

Urban Sprawl

The Good News

Coal smoke declines after 1950

RRs switch to diesel

Power plants to natural gas

Now the bad news

New synthetics put worse chemicals into air

Automobile transforms American environment

Air pollution, roads, urban sprawl

High compression engines require leaded gasoline, 1920s

Cars on leaded gas pass factories as polluters

Smog noticed, LA, 1943;  traced to autos, 1957

Surgeon General: air pollution & lung cancer, 1959

Los Angeles County: alert system, 1955

New Hazard: Supertanker Oil Spills

Several major oil spills in 1967

Torrey Canyon disaster: first supertanker spill

Santa Barbara Oil Spill

Oil well blowout, Santa Barbara Channel, 1969

235,000 gal. over coastline, 800 sq.mi. of ocean

Kills 1000s of birds & animals, several grey whales

Postwar Water pollution

New chemicals & synthetics

Synthetic fibers

Aluminum & plastics

Inorganic fertilizer

Pesticides & herbicides

Use more energy (oil) to produce

Produce more durable wastes

Detergents, not soap

A Throwaway Society

Rise of fast food: McDonald’s

Disposable food packaging

Cans replace returnable bottles

1960: disposable styrene cups

By 1970, landfills are overflowing

Atomic weapons

Building the bomb

Oak Ridge, TN; Hanford, WA; Los Alamos, NM

Atomic Energy Commission

Atomic atmospheric testing, 1945–63

Barry Commoner, Washington U. biologist

1953 Troy, NY, incident vs. AEC secrecy

Committee for Nuclear Information; Science and Citizen

Baby Tooth Project: strontium-90 and milk

Atoms for peace

Getting public support

Promoting peaceful uses of the atom

Clean power, “too cheap to meter”

Late 1950s: First civilian nuclear power reactors

Trust science to solve problems