Radioactive Waste Disposal at Sea: Public Ideas ... - IMO

60 Chapter 4
U.S. ocean dumping policy in 1972. One possible source of influence would
be international scientific conferences; another would be the many specialized
agencies of the United Nations that had been active in the marine pollution
field since the mid 1960s.
The United States’ Response to Ocean Dumping
In the late 1960s, asbestos, DDT, smog, and a few other names of supposedly
deadly chemicals and environments became household words in the
United States. 1 Together with nuclear fear, which had a longer history of
raised emotions, these were the subject of the most frequent protests in the
“pollution battle.” 2 They each could serve as a guide to the surge of environmental
policies that in 1969 started to sweep the United States. This
period witnessed the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act
(1969), the Occupational Safety and Health Act (1970), the Clean Air Act
(1970), and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act Amendments (1972).
Furthermore, President Richard Nixon established the Council on
Environmental Quality in 1970, and the Environmental Protection Agency
was created the same year.
The late 1960s was a time of dramatic and rapid changes of beliefs and
values in the United States. In its issue of January 26, 1970, Newsweek
reported, in an article titled “The Politicians Know an Issue,” that “Old
Washington hands have been sensing for some time that environment may
well be the key issue of the ’70s, for the nation and for their political futures.
They freely concede that no other cause has moved so swiftly from the grass
roots into the arena of public policy making. As early as 1968, environment
had surpassed law and order and in 1969 was gaining on Vietnam in total
linage in the Congressional Record. And by now, nearly everyone on
Capitol Hill seems to be actively against pollution, causing a veritable stampede
for stage center in the crusade to save America’s land, air and water.”
In 1973, the environment had clearly established itself as an issue. “A few
years ago,” Rosenbaum noted (1973, p. 51), “‘ecology’ and ‘environmental
protection’ did not exist in American public discourse; they were nonissues
to most citizens and public officials. Now we are in the midst of a
new ‘environmental decade.’”
Faced with unprecedented demands for political action to protect the
environment, President Nixon was under pressure to act. “There is no