Tackling Pollution
Senior Seminar
Silent Spring, 1962
Failure
to regulate or properly use pesticides
First
discussion of cancer danger
Emblematic of new ideas
of health and disease
Connection
between govt., private profit, pollution
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
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 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
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!