Environmental Problems, Their Causes, and Sustainability 1

What Happened during the 1970s? TheEnvironmental DecadeIncreased awareness and public concern led Congressto pass a number of laws to improve environmentalquality and conserve more of the nation’s naturalresources.During the 1970s, media attention, public concernabout environmental problems, scientific research, andaction to address these concerns grew rapidly. Figure 4on p. A6 of Appendix 2 summarizes major environmentalevents during this period, which is sometimescalled the first decade of the environmentThe first annual Earth Day was held on April 20,1970. During this event, proposed by Senator GaylordNelson (born 1916), some 20 million people in morethan 2,000 communities took to the streets to heightenawareness and to demand improvements in environmentalquality.Republican President Richard Nixon (1913–94) respondedto the rapidly growing environmental movement.He established the Environmental ProtectionAgency (EPA) in 1970 and supported passage of theEndangered Species Act of 1973. This greatly strengthenedthe role of the federal government in protectingendangered species and their habitats.In 1978, the Federal Land Policy and Management Actgave the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) its first realauthority to manage the public land under its control,85% of which is in 12 western states. This law angereda number of western interests whose use of these publiclands was restricted for the first time.In response, a coalition of ranchers, miners, loggers,developers, farmers, some elected officials, andothers launched a political campaign known as thesagebrush rebellion. It had two major goals. One was tosharply reduce government regulation of the use ofpublic lands. The other was to remove most publiclands in the western United States from federal ownershipand management and turn them over to the states.Then the plan was to persuade state legislatures to sellor lease the resource-rich lands at low prices to ranching,mining, timber, land development, and other privateinterests. This represented a return to PresidentHoover’s plan to turn all public land over to privateownership that was thwarted by the Great Depression.Jimmy Carter (a Democrat, born 1924), president between1977 and 1981, was very responsive to environmentalconcerns. He persuaded Congress to create theDepartment of Energy to develop a long-range energystrategy to reduce the country’s heavy dependence onimported oil. He appointed respected environmentaliststo key positions in environmental and resourceagencies and consulted with environmental leaders onenvironmental and resource policy matters.In 1980, Carter helped create a Superfund as part ofthe Comprehensive Environment Response, Compensation,and Liability Act to clean up abandoned hazardouswaste sites, including the Love Canal near NiagaraFalls, New York. Carter also used the Antiquities Actof 1906 to triple the amount of land in the NationalWilderness System and double the area in theNational Park System (primarily by adding vast tractsin Alaska).What Happened during the 1980s? EnvironmentalBacklashAn anti-environmental movement formed toweaken or do away with many of the environmentallaws passed in the 1960s and 1970s and to destroythe political effectiveness of the environmentalmovement.Figure 5 on p. A6 in Appendix 2 summarizes some keyenvironmental events during the 1980s that shapedU.S. environmental policy. During this decade, farmersand ranchers and leaders of the oil, automobile,mining, and timber industries strongly opposed manyof the environmental laws and regulations developedin the 1960s and 1970s. They organized andfunded a strong anti-environmental movement that persiststoday.In 1981, Ronald Reagan (a Republican, born 1911),a self-declared sagebrush rebel and advocate of lessfederal control, became president. During his 8 yearsin office he angered environmentalists by appointingto key federal positions people who opposed most existingenvironmental and public land use laws andpolicies.Reagan greatly increased private energy and mineraldevelopment and timber cutting on public lands.He also drastically cut federal funding for research onenergy conservation and renewable energy resourcesand eliminated tax incentives for residential solar energyand energy conservation enacted during theCarter administration. In addition, he lowered automobilegas mileage standards and relaxed federal airand water quality pollution standards.Although Reagan was immensely popular, manypeople strongly opposed his environmental and resourcepolicies. This resulted in strong opposition inCongress, public outrage, and legal challenges by environmentaland conservation organizations, whosememberships soared during this period.In 1988, an industry-backed anti-environmentalcoalition called the wise-use movement was formed. Itsmajor goals were to weaken or repeal most of thecountry’s environmental laws and regulations anddestroy the effectiveness of the environmental movementin the United States. Politically powerful coal,28 CHAPTER 2 Environmental History: Learning from the Past