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What Accounts For the Rise of Environmentalism in the 1960s and 1970s?
The life of a person in the twenty-frst century and the life a person before the
twentieth century is much diferent. Prior to the twentieth century, one would seldom
purchase something that was not necessary. During the twentieth century, however,
some luxuries were common in someones household. This switch was made essentially
because of the new availability of some luxuries. Certain luxuries were becoming mass
produced, and in response, mass consumed. These luxuries included; the gas stove,
indoor plumbing, and an automobile.
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Along with these luxuries, nature became an
enjoyable environment. Outdoor recreations were also very rare. When people started
spending money on luxuries in the 1920s, people also started to enjoy outdoor
recreations more and even began buying houses outside of the city to own private land.
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The demand for houses with private land outside of the city became larger and larger,
leading up to the increase in suburban real estate. Before the twentieth century,
someone who worked in the cities could not easily live outside of the city, but in the
twentieth century with trains and cars, people could live outside of the city, but still work
in the city. An increase in suburban living and consumerism in the mid-twentieth century
led to environmentalism in the 1970s.
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When people started living the suburban life, they were further away from the city,
where many people worked. This separation was solved by cars, which were great for
bridging the gap between home and work, but cars use fossil fuels, which are, frst of all,
non-renewable, and second of all, release carbon dioxide into the air. Carbon dioxide is
an air pollutant that builds up in the atmosphere, creating a rise in the earths
temperature.
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Climate determines an enormous amount of the rest of nature - where
the forests stop and the prairies or the tundra begins, where the rain falls and where the
arid deserts squat, where the lakes evaporate, where the sea rises.
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This rise in
temperature is harmful to the earth, as it alters the earth, melting the icecaps in freezing
areas and also making it more difcult for farmers to grow crops.
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Cars are awful for the
environment, because they emit carbon dioxide, which is an air pollutant which causes
the earth to warm much more than it should naturally.
Consumerism is a large environmental problem, because when something is
bought, usually it comes in a container. Once the product is used, the container is
simply thrown into the garbage. The garbage, including the container and many other
objects, is then dumped into a large hole dug in the ground or a lake. Some of this
garbage is modern plastic, which is made of unnatural, manmade materials. These
modern plastics are non-degradable, which means that these plastic containers will
forever be in the ground or lakes.
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This pollution, in both cases, is very harmful to the
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environment, as it makes the lakes uninhabitable for wild-life. One extreme example of
how this dumping of waste is harmful to the environment, is Love Canal. Love Canal
was a city that was build on top of an old waste dump. The primary building on top of
this dump, was a public school. In 1974, Mrs. and Mr. Gibbs were residents of this
neighborhood, and their kids went to school there. Their children were suddenly
diagnosed with blood disease. This was very odd, until it was shown that the school was
on top of an old waste dump. The 20,000 tons of chemicals seeping under the Gibbs
neighborhood came from the Hooker Chemical Corporation, which had dumped them in
an abandoned canal owned by the city.
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This illustrates the efect of pollution in the
environment that is completely unnatural.
These environmental problems were very big in the 1960s and 1970s. When
people found out about the pollution of cars and waste and how harmful it can be, they
realized something had to be done. People of these local towns drove this, and created
a better environment. These were the grass-roots that led to large political movements
concerning environmental protection.
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This movement of people pushing for a cleaner
earth and culture were environmentalists. Environmentalism can be defned by The
conviction that industrial societies, in their present form, are incompatible with natural
systems and that human progress lies in the increasing knowledge and understanding
of how best to live as members of plant and animal communities.
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This means that the
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way of living apart from nature in the mid-twentieth century was not the correct way of
living, and that as people, life should be lived coherently with nature, not against it.
By the 1970s, many environmental protection laws were passed, including; The
Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Act, the Federal Water
Pollution Control Act, the Ocean Dumping Act, and the Beautifcation Act.
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All of these
acts were progressing toward a clean, healthy earth. Along with these acts, on April 22,
1970, the frst Earth Day was celebrated. Earth Day is an American holiday that
celebrates our appreciation for the environment. Earth Day is a part of
environmentalism, which is a movement that values people more than technology,
people more than political boundaries and political ideologies, people more than proft.
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Environmentalism is driven by people, small communities and groups that desire a
better earth. Environmentalism is helped by politicians and politics, but it cannot
succeed without the people, the grass-roots underneath it.
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1 Samuel P. Hays, From Conservation to Environment. (Autumn, 1982), 22.
2 Samuel P. Hays, From Conservation to Environment. (Autumn, 1982), 23.
3 Steven Stoll, ed., U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford,
2007), 67.
4 Steven Stoll, ed., U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford,
2007), 123.
5 Eisenberg, Andrew. Consumers. American Revolutions, Temple University, April 2013.
6 Steven Stoll, ed., U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford,
2007), 85.
7 Steven Stoll, ed., U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford,
2007), 21.
8 Samuel P. Hays, From Conservation to Environment. (Autumn, 1982), 16.
9 Steven Stoll, ed., U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford,
2007), 2.
10 Steven Stoll, ed., U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford,
2007), 157.
11 Steven Stoll, ed., U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Bedford,
2007), 110.