The 1950s:
Environmental issues heat up
Nature and Americans
The “Fifties
Syndrome”
The
shift to petroleum from coal
Consumption and Waste
Water pollution
increases
Chemicals
& synthetics
Use more energy (oil) to
produce
Produce more durable
wastes
Synthetic
fibers
Aluminum
& plastics
Inorganic
fertilizer
Pesticides
& herbicides
Detergents,
not soap
Air Pollution Crises
Donora,
Pennsylvania, Halloween 1948
21 die
One-third of city ill
London’s “Killer Fog”
December
1952: 4000 dead
The Good News
Coal
smoke declines after 1950
Railroads 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
need 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
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
Rise of nature
recreation
The
Cold War: the Communist threat
Hard to
argue for regulation & preservation
But growing interest in
preserving nature
Skyrocketing
attendance of national parks
Nature
writing: frequent bestsellers
Dams: The “Go-Go
Years”
Colorado
River Compact, 1922
Bureau
of Reclamation’s
Colorado River Storage Project, 1950
10 dams — $1,000,000,000
2 dams in Dinosaur
National Monument
Test
case
Threatened
logging of Olympic peninsula
Dams in
Glacier, Grand Canyon, Kings Canyon, Adirondacks?
Development stopped
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)