The Environmental Movement
Earth, Wind, and Fire
Consumers in Nature
1920s
rise in camping, sport hunting, and fishing
Cars, better roads, more leisure & money
RVs and campers
Johnson outboard motor
Coleman lantern & stove
Foundation for
Environmentalism
CCC’s
legacy: support for conservation
1950s:
Growing interest in preserving nature
Skyrocketing attendance of national parks
Nature writing: frequent bestsellers in 1950s
Dams: The “Go-Go Years”
Colorado
River Compact, 1922
Bureau
of Reclamation: Colorado River Storage Project, 1950
10 dams — $1,000,000,000
Progressive motives: growth of Southwest
foreseen
2 dams in Dinosaur National Monument
Created 1915, expanded 1938
Test case
Threatened logging of Olympic peninsula
Dams in Glacier, Grand Canyon, Kings Canyon, Adirondacks?
Conservation Gets Political
Dinosaur:
battle for congressional funding
100% support of Western Congressmen
Control irrigation & reclamation subcommittees
Sierra Club, Wilderness Society lead resistance
David Brower, Howard Zahniser
Publicity blitz: articles in major newspapers and magazines
New tactic: scientific argument: bad place for a dam
Dam deleted from 1956 bill; last proposed park
dam
Dinosaur’s high price
Glen
Canyon dam
Brower: The Place No One Knew (1963)
The Wilderness Act
Quandary
of permanent protection
Congress, Forest Svc., Dept. of Agriculture?
Howard
Zahniser, evangelist for wilderness
Begins after 1956 defeat of Echo Park dam
Proposed extensive system: 60 million acres
Bitterly fought by development interests
Passed 1964: 9 million acres
Triumph
of passage
Wilderness system expanded since (now 109
million acres)
More Dam Battles
Floyd
Dominy’s Pacific Southwest Water Plan
2 Grand Canyon dams: 93 & 53 miles long
Hearings 1965–6; administration supports
Brower’s Sierra Club ads in NY
Times & Washington Post
IRS revokes tax-exempt status
Membership: 1966 39,000; 1971 135,000
Club movie, book Time and River
Flowing
1967 dams withdrawn
Impact of Silent Spring,
1962
Failure
to regulate or properly use pesticides
First
discussion of cancer danger
Emblematic of new ideas of health and disease
Four
themes—all themes of environmentalism
Parallel between nuclear radiation &
chemical pollutants
Pesticides as symptom of several modern
fallacies
Replace chemical w/biological & natural
controls
Focus on environmental dangers to health
Galvanized
action
6 most toxic banned or restricted, pesticides
regulated
Skyrocketing membership
National
Wildlife Federation: largest, richest
1970: 30% hunters; 20% opposed to all hunting
National
Audubon Society
1965–75: 8X growth; PR & glossy magazine
Sierra
Club: Most influential & best-known
David Brower steers club to national prominence
Sierra Club Books: Ansel Adams & Eliot Porter
Couldn’t delegate, overspent, ignored directors, lost tax-exempt
status which hurt large contributions
Ousted 1969
Founded Friends of the Earth, John Muir Institute for
Environmental Studies, & Earth Island Institute
Lyndon Johnson’s Great
Society
Tackling
education, poverty, racism, pollution, 1964–69
Lady Bird Johnson
Highway beautification
Secretary
of Interior Stewart Udall
4 national parks, 6 national monuments,
8 national seashores, 9 national recreation areas, 20 national historic sites,
56 national wildlife refuges
Key role in environmental legislation
The Quiet Crisis, 1963
Cleaning up the water
New
Deal: construction of thousands of water treatment plants
Congressional
hearings, ’63–’65
Industry & states: no damper on growth
Water
Quality Act of 1965
First federal water pollution control agency:
Water Pollution Control Administration
Set standards in states that had no letter of intent to do so
Grants for waste treatment plants
Clean
Waters Act of 1966
Allows “accidental” discharge of oil
Cleaning up the air
Senator
Edmund Muskie of Maine takes up the issue
4-day New York City inversion, 1966: 168 deaths
Air
Quality Act of 1967
Requires state standards, like water act
Loopholes
High-sulfur coal states prevent sulfur standards
Auto companies prevent pollution control on cars
Cleaning auto exhaust
Justice
Dept., 1969: auto companies conspired against pollution control devices
Clean
Air Act of 1970
Cut auto emissions 90% by 1975
Requires national air quality standards
Thinking Ecologically in
the 1970s
Living
responsibly
René Dubos: “Think globally; act locally”
Energy-efficient
houses
Buying
fuel-efficient automobiles
Back
to the bicycle
Corporate
environmental solutions:
Antilittering and recycling
Bringing
back public transportation
Amtrak, 1970
The population explosion
Population
growth as threat to wilderness and nature
Malthusian best-sellers
Fairfield Osborn, Our Plundered Planet, 1948
William Vogt, Road to Survival
Director of Planned Parenthood, 1949
Sierra
Club supports population control, 1965
David
Brower asks Paul Ehrlich to write book
Stanford biology professor
The Population Bomb, 1967
3 million copies: Doom!
Sierra Club launches Zero Population Growth
A New Ecological Awareness
Focus changes from
human needs to nature
Countercultural
distrust of government & corporations
Contradictions between ideals and society
Hollow materialism of suburban consumer society
Problems: racism, poverty, war, pollution
Back to nature
No plastics or chemicals
Natural foods, natural fibers, natural products
New “Waldens”: the rural commune movement
Explosion of backpacking, camping, outdoors
activities
The Environmental
President?
Richard
Nixon, 1969
Positioning for re-election bid in 1972
Environmental Protection
Agency
Nixon
panel recommends consolidation of conservation programs, 1970
Complications:
politics and political friends
Agriculture Dept. keeps Forest Service
Commerce Dept. keeps programs of NOAA
NOAA created 1970 for air and ocean research
Interior loses EPA
Secretary of the Interior Walter Hickel a critic of Kent State
First
director: William D. Ruckelshaus
Ability, charisma, committed staff, support of
Congress & environmentalists
The EPA’s challenges
Research
& advisory roles & watchdog over 247 air quality control regions
Review state implementation plans
Oversee monitoring
Penalize polluting plants & industries
Achievements:
Inventory polluting industries
Air quality standards for many pollutants
Protect health as well as crops, plants,
wildlife, soil, & water
Tightening regulation
National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), 1969
Environmental impact statements
Water
Pollution Control Act amendments, 1972
No discharges by 1985; latest technology
required
Billions appropriated for new construction
The toxic environment
Workplace
health
Alice Hamilton (1869-1970)
Occupational Health & Safety Act of 1970
(OSHA)
Toxic
chemical regulation
Pesticides: FIFRA, 1972; herbicides added, 1978
Chemicals: Toxic Substances Control Act, 1976
1972
EPA mandate: list toxic chemicals, standards
Scientific data complex, missing, contradictory
National Resources Defense Council suits
Enforceable list of 65 chemicals, out of 1000s
Industry demand variances case-by-case
Ties up EPA; hope for friendlier administration
Outlawing extinctions
Endangered
Species Act of 1973
Follows acts protecting native fish &
wildlife, 1966; invertebrates and threatened species, 1969; marine mammals,
1972
Protection of “critical habitat”
Age of Limits
1972:
Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth
Apocalypticism, doom, Malthusianism
Limits Are Here: Energy
Crisis
The
First Oil Crisis
1973 Arab-Israeli War: OPEC oil embargo
Shortages, inflation, high prices, recession
Carter
administration’s energy plan, 1977
“Moral equivalent to war”
Reduce consumption with taxes
Encourage domestic energy production (coal, solar)
55 mph speed limit; EPA fuel efficiency ratings
Department of Energy, 1977
Second
Oil Crisis: Iranian Revolution, 1979
Synthetic Fuels Corporation
Solar Energy Research Institute
Deindustrialization:
the “Rust Belt”
Smokestack
industry at peak, 1910
1950s
growth is less than general economy
Deindustrialization
begins by 1960
Rapid
collapse of manufacturing in 1980s
Pollution
declines but “brownfields” left behind
Toxic chemical horror
stories
Love
Canal at Niagara Falls, NY , 1978
Miscarriages, birth defects, liver ills
Carter: national emergency; buys 240 homes
“Valley
of the Drums” in Kentucky
17,000 leaky steel drums in open field
Times
Beach, Missouri
Oil mixed with dioxin used on roads
1983: town evacuated
Clean-up
EPA
Superfund (CERCLA) created 1980
Mission: clean up toxic waste dumps
Banned certain chemicals
EPA
regulates waste transport, dumping
End of Nuclear Power
Push
to develop nuclear power
Three
Mile Island incident, Penn., 1979
Near disaster; release of some radiation
Construction
costs skyrocket
Nuclear Regulatory Commission safety standards
Activists fight completion of plants
Chernobyl
disaster, 1986
100 times more radiation than Hiroshima
No
completed reactor orders since 1974