Tackling Pollution

Nature and Americans

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

Johnson’s Environmental Actions

Great Society and pollution

Lady Bird Johnson

Highway beautification

Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall

The Quiet Crisis, 1963

Key role in environmental legislation

4 national parks, 6 national monuments, 8 national seashores, 9 national recreation areas, 20 national historic sites, 56 national wildlife refuges

Cleaning up the water

Congressional hearings, ’63–’65

Industry & states: no damper on growth

Water Quality Act of 1965

Water Pollution Control Administration

Set standards in states that had no letter of intent to do so

Grants for waste treatment plants

First federal water pollution control agency

Clean Waters Act of 1966

Allows “accidental” discharge of oil

Cleaning up the air

CA Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board, ’61

Kennedy calls for federal air pollution control

Clean Air Act of 1963

Sen. Edmund Muskie of Me. 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

The population explosion

1950s: control population to protection of wilderness, nature

Osborn, Our Plundered Planet, 1948

Vogt, Road to Survival, 1948

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!