The Roots of the Environmental Movement in the United States

1
The Roots of the Environmental Movement in the
United States
2
George P. Marsh, three-quarter length portrait,
standing, facing left, holding hat / Brady, N.Y
In 1847, George P. Marsh U.S. Congressman from
Vermont, delivers a seminal speech to the
Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont,
calling attention to the destructive impact of
human activity on the land, especially through
deforestation, and advocating a conservationist
approach to the management of forested lands
http//lcweb2.loc.gov/
3
19th Century

• 1849
• Establishment of the U.S. Department of Interior.
  
• 1850s
• Beginning around the middle of the eighteenth
  century, European and American literary figures
  had drawn increasing attention to the importance
  of nature by now, in the mid-nineteenth century,
  travel literature in periodicals and books joins
  with this Romantic literary legacy to stimulate a
  broad popular movement of "nature appreciation."
• Throughout the remaining decades of the century,
  the nature essay burgeons as an American literary
  genre.
• Throughout the last half of the nineteenth and
  into the early twentieth century, interest in
  ornithology proliferates through books, articles,
  and local clubs, providing a grass-roots base for
  support of many aspects of conservation

4
"I went to the woods because I wished to live
deliberately. To front only the essential facts
of life and see if I could not learn what it had
to teach and not, when I came to die, discover
that I had not lived." - Thoreau
1854 Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden or,
Life in the Woods
http//www.wilsonart.com/design/statement/viewarti
cle.asp
5
19th Century

• Prints, lithographs and engravings of American
  scenery, especially in the West, receive wide
  popular distribution between this decade and the
  turn of the century, stimulating broad interest
  in and appreciation for the special qualities of
  the American landscape, including its wilderness.

6
The Grand Canon, Yellowstone / TM Prang's
American Chromo
Summit of the Sierras, Nevada / T. Moran
Prang's American Chromo
http//lcweb2.loc.gov/
7
Delaware Water Gap / G. Perkins R. Hinshelwood.
http//lcweb2.loc.gov/
8
19th Century

• 1850s
• Citing the observations of Alexander von Humboldt
  and others on the effects of deforestation,
  Thomas Ewbank, the United States Commissioner of
  Patents, warns in his two-volume Report of the
  Commissioner of Patents, for the Year 1849 (House
  of Representatives Executive Document No. 20)
  that "the waste of valuable timber in the United
  States will hardly begin to be appreciated until
  our population reaches fifty millions. Then the
  folly and shortsightedness of this age will meet
  with a degree of censure and reproach not
  pleasant to contemplate."

9
19th Century

• In the same document, Ewbank also warns that "the
  vast multitudes of bisons slain yearly, the
  ceaseless war carried on against them, if
  continued, threatens their extermination, and
  must hereafter cause deep regret" especially in
  view of "their great strength and docility, when
  tamed, and their capacity for being drilled to
  the yoke,... it should never be said that the
  noblest of American indigenous ruminants have
  become extinct." Articles on the long-term harm
  produced by forest destruction appear in the
  reports of the commissioners of patents and of
  agriculture in this decade and during the 1860s.

10
Buffalo skulls, mid-1870s, waiting to be ground
into fertilizer
Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo
is exterminated, as it is the only way to bring
lasting peace and allow civilization to advance.
General Philip Sheridan
11
19th Century

• The commissioners charged with developing New
  York City's new Central Park as the first major
  rural park in an American city hold a landscape
  design competition the winning entry is the
  "Greensward" plan created by Frederick Law
  Olmsted, who had been appointed the new Park's
  first Superintendent the preceding year, and
  British architect Calvert Vaux, and Olmsted is
  also appointed the Park's architect-in-chief.
• Its realization long hampered by the political
  infighting and insensitive public management
  which led to Olmsted's final departure in 1877,
  the Olmsted-Vaux design nevertheless gives
  Central Park its enduring identity, and
  profoundly influences the future course of
  landscape architecture in the United States

12
http//www.teensygreen.com/wp-content/uploads/2008
/04/centralpark.jpg
CENTRAL PARK, NYC
http//www.americanheritage.com/assets/images/arti
cles/web/20080425-GreenswardPlan.jpg
13
19th Century

• 1866
• The word "ecology" is coined by the German
  biologist Ernst Haeckel.
• 1867
• Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden leads his first
  Federally-sponsored Survey in the West by the
  time it ends in 1878, the survey under his
  leadership has conducted landmark explorations
  throughout the region and contributed vitally to
  the scientific, photographic, and artistic
  representation of the Western landscape.

14
19th Century

• 1872 Congress passes "An Act to set apart a
  certain Tract of Land lying near the Head-waters
  of the Yellowstone River as a public Park,", thus
  establishing Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming,
  the first in the history of the nation and of the
  world the Report of the Superintendent of the
  Yellowstone National Park for the Year 1872,
  published the following year, provides a portrait
  of the new park at its birth.

15
19th Century

• 1876
• John Muir publishes "God's First Temples How
  Shall We Preserve Our Forests?," one of his
  earliest pieces of published writing, in the
  Sacramento Record-Union in it, he suggests the
  necessity for government protection of forests.
• The Appalachian Mountain Club is founded in
  Boston, emphasizing a sense of stewardship toward
  the New England mountain wilds as part of its
  organizational philosophy it is one of the
  nation's first and most important private
  conservation-related organizations.

16
19th Century

• 1878
• John Wesley Powell, then the geologist in charge
  of the U.S. Geographical and Geological Survey of
  the Rocky Mountain Region, publishes Report on
  the Lands of the Arid Region of the United
  States, a pioneering work recognizing the West's
  unique environmental character, advocating
  irrigation and conservation efforts in it, and
  calling for the distribution of Western lands to
  settlers on a democratic and environmentally
  realistic basis.
• 1879
• Congress passes a sub-section of an
  appropriations bill officially establishing the
  U.S. Geological Survey as a bureau of the
  Interior Department, with responsibility for "the
  classification of the public lands."

17
19th Century

• 1890
• In less than a week, Congress passes legislation
  establishing Sequoia National Park, California
  (in a bill enacted September 25), and Yosemite
  and General Grant National Parks, California (in
  a bill enacted October 1).
• 1892
• In San Francisco, John Muir and a group of
  associates meet to found the Sierra Club, which
  is modeled on the Appalachian Mountain Club and
  explicitly dedicated to the preservation of
  wilderness.
• 1896
• The American Academy of Sciences establishes a
  committee on forests, chaired by Charles Sprague
  Sargent, with Gifford Pinchot as its youngest
  member, which takes a census of the nation's
  forests and calls for their active management.
• 1897
• As part of an appropriations bill, Congress
  passes what is known as the Forest Management
  Act, or Organic Act, making explicit the purpose
  of Forest Reserves (later National Forests) as
  resources for lumbering, mining, and grazing and
  providing the blueprint for their management
  until the 1960s this act also places Federal
  forest administration under the jurisdiction of
  the General Land Office, Department of the
  Interior.
• This year and the next, John Muir publishes two
  articles in the Atlantic Monthly, "The American
  Forests" (1897) and "The Wild Parks and Forest
  Reservations of the West," which reveal the shift
  in his thought from compromise to absolute
  opposition on the question of "use" of protected
  resources these articles are later republished
  in his book Our National Parks, in 1901.

18
19th Century

• 1898
• Gifford Pinchot appointed chief of the Division
  of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture
  begins crusade to convert the public and forest
  industry to support for scientific forest
  management.

http//lcweb2.loc.gov
19
Early 20th Century

• Teddy Roosevelt and his forester Gifford Pinchot
  characterized the era with ideas about conserving
  large tracts of land and putting other forests to
  "wise use."
• John Muir opposes the "wise use" idea and fights
  for outright preservation of unspoiled
  wilderness.
• New organizations like the womens clubs and the
  Sierra Club help champion natural preservation,
  conservation and municipal reform.

President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford
Pinchot, full-length portrait from behind,
standing on deck of steamer Mississippi, during
tour of Inland Waterways Commission.
20
Early 20th Century

• 1901
• Theodore Roosevelt becomes President of the
  United States upon the death of President
  McKinley on September 14, and conservation
  becomes a cornerstone of his domestic policy.
• President Theodore Roosevelt's First Annual
  Message outlines his goals of forest conservation
  and preservation (including the use of forest
  reserves as wildlife preserves), and the need for
  government-sponsored irrigation projects in the
  arid West.

21
Early 20th Century

• 1907
• In his Seventh Annual Message, President
  Roosevelt makes the case for utilitarian
  conservationism especially forcefully, asserting
  that "the conservation of our natural resources
  and their proper use constitute the fundamental
  problem which underlies almost every other
  problem of our National life," and that his
  administration has been trying "to substitute a
  planned and orderly development of our resources
  in place of a haphazard striving for immediate
  profit."

22
Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir on Glacier
Point, Yosemite Valley, California
http//lcweb2.loc.gov
23
20th Century

• 1908
• President Roosevelt issues Proclamations
  establishing Muir Woods National Monument,
  California, on land donated to the Federal
  government for that purpose by civic reformer and
  future Congressman William Kent Grand Canyon
  National Monument, Arizona Pinnacles National
  Monument, California Jewel Cave National
  Monument, South Dakota Natural Bridges National
  Monument, Utah Lewis and Clark Cavern National
  Monument, Montana and Wheeler National Monument,
  Colorado.
• The Land Classification Board is established
  within the U.S. Geological Survey to classify
  natural resources systematically so as to
  determine their best use.
• 1909
• President Roosevelt convenes the North American
  Conservation Conference, held in Washington and
  attended by representatives of Canada,
  Newfoundland, Mexico, and the United States.
• President Taft issues Proclamations establishing
  Oregon Caves National Monument, Oregon,
  Mukuntuweap National Monument, Utah, and Shoshone
  Cavern National Monument, Wyoming.
• For the next several years, conservationists
  appointed by Roosevelt turn to the general public
  for support of their policies in the face of
  conflict with Congress and appointees of
  President Taft as a result, conservation gains
  greater national attention, even as policy
  debates also increasingly involve those more
  anxious to preserve natural resources for
  aesthetic/spiritual reasons than to put them to
  practical use.

24
Early 20th Century

• Reform was the common concern.
• Reform of working conditions, slum housing, food
  adulteration, sanitation, drinking water,
  polluting industries and more.

25
20th Century

• 1908.
• The first continuous chlorination system in North
  America begins operating in Jersey City, starting
  a trend in drinking water disinfection to stop
  the ravages of cholera, typhoid and other
  diseases caused by water that is polluted by
  sewage discharges.
• 1918.
• The first International Joint Commission report
  speaks of chaotic, perilous and disgraceful water
  pollution in parts of the Great Lakes.

26
1920s

• PCBs are developed and put into service as liquid
  insulators and heat-transfer fluids. Decades
  later, they will found to be hazardous, widely
  distributed in the environment and building up in
  the food chain. They will be banned for use in
  North America.
• CFCs are synthesized in mid-1920s and put into
  use in 1930s as refrigerants. They will later be
  found to destroy the stratospheric ozone layer,
  and be banned.
• Tetraethyl lead is introduced as an anti-knock
  gasoline additive. It is later declared a health
  risk and gradually phased out.

27
Mid 20th Century

• Sand County Almanac by forrester Aldo Leopold,
  published in 1948 just after his death, expresses
  the an expanding sense of human responsibility,
  not only for each other but also for the earth. .

28
Mid 20th Century

• Deadly smog episodes in Donora Penn. (1948),
  London (1952, 1956), New York (1953), and Los
  Angeles (1954) create the perception that an air
  pollution crisis is underway.
• 1952. The infamous London smog kills 4,000. A
  year later, a New York smog kills about 200.
• In 1955 the first international air pollution
  conference is held.

29
1950s

• Increasing CO2 buildup is one surprising
  conclusion of Scripps Oceanographic Institute
  scientists working on International Geophysical
  Year projects 1957.

http//www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/co2_data_
mlo.html
30
1960s

• 1960. World population is 3 billion.
• 1961. Creation of the World Wildlife Fund to
  protect animals and plants threatened with
  extinction.
• Rachel Carson
• 1962. U.S. biologist and ecologist Rachel Carson
  publishes Silent Spring, which warns of the
  harmful effects of pesticides, such as DDT.
• The book causes a huge public debate about
  chemical risks in general, and is often
  considered the birth of the modern environmental
  era

http//www.sustreport.org/resource/es_timeline.htm
31
1960s

• 1968. Paul Ehrlichs book, The Population Bomb,
  warning of ecological threats from a rapidly
  expanding human population, triggers an intense
  and ongoing debate about population, consumption
  and the relative impacts on the environment of
  rich and poor nations.
• A burning river ends the decade as a dramatic
  symbol of an environment on the brink.
• On June 22, 1969, oil and chemicals in the
  Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio catch fire.
  Flames top five stories.

32
Forty years ago, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland
became the poster child for the problem of
industrial pollution on American rivers. A Time
Magazine article reported the local joke that if
a person fell in the river they would not drown,
but decay. That article sparked outrage in the
American public and jumpstarted the environmental
movement and the Clean Water Act.
Burning rivers in industrialized areas were
common through the late 19th and early 20th
century. Rivers and harbors once burned in
Michigan, New York, Maryland, and Pennsylvania,
among other states. The Cuyahoga's first reported
conflagration happened well over a century ago.
... Over time, the fire hazard became great
enough to threaten local shipping.
(http//www.loe.org)
33
1970s

• 1970. A decade of awakening and cleanup begins
  with the birth of the Environmental Protection
  Agency
• Air pollution is cut back dramatically through
  use of catalytic converters on new cars that use
  only unleaded gasoline. But the predicted
  "pollution free car" proves to be chimerical.
• 1970. Clean Air Act
• Water pollution is greatly decreased through a
  massive sewage treatment expansion program.
• 1972. Clean Water Act
• Rivers which were once sewers now begin a gradual
  return from the grave. Still, the "national
  pollution discharge elimination system" (NPDES)
  does not actually eliminate discharges
• In 1972, only 36 percent of the nation's assessed
  stream miles were safe for uses such as fishing
  and swimming today, about 60 percent are safe
  for such uses.
• 1974. Congress passes the Safe Drinking Water
  Act, allowing EPA to regulate the quality of
  public drinking water.

34
1970s

• 1970. World population is 3.7 billion
• The first Earth Day is held in the United States
  on April 22, attracting 20 million people and
  creating one of the largest organized
  demonstrations in U.S. history
• 1972. EPA bans DDT, a cancer-causing pesticide,
  and requires extensive review of all pesticides.
• In 1996, the bald eagle was removed from the
  endangered species list, reflecting its recovery
  since the 1972 DDT ban.
• 1973. The oil embargo by Arab nations in the
  Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
  creates a world energy crisis and drives up oil
  prices. This sparks the largest round of energy
  conservation measures in North America since the
  Second World War. Sales of small cars soar,
  thermostats are turned down, insulation is added
  to buildings, lights are turned off when not in
  use, darkening skylines and governments invest in
  energy conservation.

35
1970s

• 1976. RCRA-Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
  
• Protecting human health and the environment from
  the potential hazards of waste disposal.
• Conserving energy and natural resources.
• Reducing the amount of waste generated.
• Ensuring that wastes are managed in an
  environmentally-sound manner.

36
1970s

• 1976. Love Canal becomes the biggest pollution
  story in North America.
• Chemicals seep from an old toxic waste dump in
  Niagara Falls, N.Y. into neighborhood basements,
  and bubble up onto the ground beside the
  elementary school.
• The chemicals, including dioxin, also drain into
  the Niagara River and Lake Ontario.
• In subsequent years, millions of people
  downstream fear for the safety of their drinking
  water because of concerns about chemicals leaking
  from Love Canal and more than 150 other chemical
  dumps along the Niagara River.

37
In 2004, after Love Canal became the first
polluted site on the newly created Superfund
list, federal officials announced that the
neighborhood that epitomized environmental horror
in the late 1970's was clean enough to be taken
off the list.
38
1970s

• 1979. James E. Lovelock publishes Gaia A New
  Look at Life on Earth, suggesting the planet is a
  self-regulating entity, unconsciously maintaining
  optimal conditions for life through a series of
  interactions among living and non-living
  components.

39
1970s

• 1978. The federal government bans
  chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as propellants in
  aerosol cans because CFCs destroy the ozone
  layer, which protects the earth from harmful
  ultraviolet radiation.
• 1979. EPA demonstrates scrubber technology for
  removing air pollution from coal-fired power
  plants. This technology is widely adopted in the
  1980s.
• 1979. Three Mile Island nuclear power plant
  accident near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, increases
  awareness and discussion about nuclear power
  safety. EPA and other agencies monitor
  radioactive fallout.

40
1980

• The Comprehensive Environmental Response,
  Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), also
  known as "Superfund," was enacted in 1980 to
  address the problem of remediating abandoned
  hazardous waste sites (i.e. Love Canal), by
  establishing legal liability, as well as a trust
  fund for cleanup activities

41
1980s

• Disasters such as the nuclear accident at
  Chernobyl (1986), the chemical accident at
  Bhopal, India (1984), in combination with more
  attention on long-term problems such as acid
  rain, the ozone layer, climate change,
  desertification, destruction of rain forests,
  garbage and toxic waste create a major focus on
  environment.

42
1980s

• 1988. Climate Change Intergovernmental Panel
  Climate Change organized
• 2007. IPCC Al Gore win Nobel Peace Prize
• "for their efforts to build up and disseminate
  greater knowledge about man-made climate change,
  and to lay the foundations for the measures that
  are needed to counteract such change".