The Environmental history of the United States covers the history of the environment over the centuries to the late 20th century, plus the political and expert debates on conservation and environmental issues.[1] The term "conservation" appeared in 1908 and was gradually replaced by "environmentalism" in the 1970s as the focus shifted from managing and protecting natural resources to a broader concern for the environment as a whole and the negative impact of poor air or water on humans.
According to Erin Stewart Mauldin, the geological history of the United States predates human settlement by millions of years.[2] The landscape of the North American continent's landscape was shaped by plate tectonics, volcanic activity, and glaciation. The Appalachian Mountains resulted from plate collisions, the Rocky Mountains from the subduction of the Pacific Ocean floor, and the Pacific Northwest and New England from the accretion of microcontinents. Glaciation formed the Great Lakes and influenced soil composition across the country, with volcanic activity contributing to regions like the Columbia Plateau. Paleoindians from Siberia were the continent's first human inhabitants starting 30,000 BCE. They coexisted with megafauna like mammoths. The reasons for these species' extinction, possibly due to climate change or human hunting, remain debated. The absence of large domesticable animals in North America affected the development of societies, limiting hunting and herding and later giving European colonizers a biological edge. Native Americans developed diverse subsistence strategies, including agriculture, hunting, and fishing, with varying practices across regions. They also impacted the landscape through land clearing and hunting practices, leading to environmental changes. The pre-Columbian landscape encountered by Europeans was significantly shaped by human activity, challenging the idea of an untouched wilderness.[3][4]
Before 1815 the New England farmers were largely self-sufficient.[5][6] The forest provided wood to build homes and barns, and fueled the stove all winter long. Timber was sold for ship construction and naval stores were sold for export to England. The remaining forest was the habitat for deer and other game that were easily hunted with muskets or traps. Once cleared the land provided pasture for the sheep (raised for the wool), the hogs, and the family cow, as well as space for the vegetable garden. The significance of the forest ranged from a threat to settlers to being a place of Puritan religious significance, as well as a source of beauty and pride. As population grew the forest transitioned from a perceived abundance to a dwindling asset. After 1815, when export markets reopened after the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, farmers in the region increasingly focused more on profitable commercial crops, especially sheep, cattle, hay, lumber, wheat. As the nearby cities grew they sold more milk and cheese, eggs, apples, cranberries and maple syrup.[7][8]
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, wastes from mining operations began to enter rivers and streams, and iron bloomeries and furnaces used water for cooling.[9]: 27, 32–33, 53 [10] In the early 19th century, the development of steam engines led to their use in the mining and manufacturing sectors (such as textiles). The expanded use of steam engines generated larger volumes of heated water (thermal pollution).[9]: 52–53 The productivity gains, along with the introduction of railroads in the 1830s and 1840s—which increased the overall demand for coal and minerals—led to additional generation of wastes.[11][12]: 68–69
Hazards of textile mills
Cash wages brought rural workers into the new textile mills first in New England after 1810 and then in the South after 1870. The mills were powered by waterwheels on local rivers and caused little harm to the external environment. The hazards came indoors as workers faced air and noise pollution. The men, women and children worked in family teams 10 hours a day in a tightly enclosed environment filled with dust and fiber. The machinery occasionally caused accidents but the polluted environment was much more serious. Having large numbers of people laboring in close quarters day after day was the ideal settings for the rapid spread of diseases including the common cold, bronchitis, pneumonia and tuberculosis. The also suffered hearing loss and fatigue. Byssinosis, also known as "brown lung disease" or "Monday fever," was particularly prevalent among cotton textile workers, with symptoms including chest tightness and shortness of breath.. There were sharp disagreements among workers, employers, and medical professionals regarding the impact of factory environments on health.[13] The mills seldom employed medical care on site but they did support community hospitals.[14]
Underground mining was a very hazardous occupation.[15] However the coal, iron, lead and copper was essential for industrialization. Mines paid well and drew many skilled miners from Britain and Germany.[16]
Paul Rakes examines coal mine fatalities in West Virginia in the first half of the 20th century. Besides the well-publicized mine disasters that killed a number of miners at a time, there were many smaller episodes in which one or two miners lost their lives. Mine accidents were considered inevitable, and mine safety did not appreciably improve the situation because of lax enforcement. West Virginia's mines were considered so unsafe that immigration officials would not recommend them as a source of employment for immigrants, but they came anyway for the high pay. When the United States Bureau of Mines was given more authority to regulate mine safety in the 1960s, safety awareness improved, and West Virginia coal mines became less dangerous.[17]
The transition after 1920 from coal to hydro and oil and later to nuclear, gas and solar power dramatically lowered the hazards to energy workers. Likewise the transition from underground to surface mining.[18]
Destruction of a fourth of the forests, 1780s to 1860s
According to geographer Michael Williams, by 1860, about 153 million acres of forest had been cleared for farms, and another 11 million acres cut down by industrial logging, mining, railroad construction, and urban expansion. A fourth of the original forest cover in the eastern states was gone. At the same time there was a major change in how Americans vie wed forests. They were recognized as the foundation of industrialization, agricultural expansion, and material progress. Lumber was the nation's largest industry in 1850, and second in 1860 behind textiles. As Frederick Starr emphasized in 1865, forests were integral to the four key necessities for prosperity: "cheap bread, cheap houses, cheap fuel, and cheap transportation for passengers and freights."[19] Lumbering was a very dangerous trade, with crippling accidents and death a common hazard. But it paid well because the lumber was essential for construction and wood was the main fuel for homes, business, steamboats and railroads. Intellectuals began examining the complex relationships between forests and soil, climate, farming, railroading and the economy. They pondered the overall ecological balance. Was the nation's energy at risk as settlement expanded westward into the trans-Mississippi prairies where wood was scarce. Given the economic and cultural importance of the forests, some worried commentators, especially George Perkins Marsh and Increase Lapham. began questioning the widespread destruction. They saw the forests and backwoods pioneers as symbols of America, and their disappearance was concerning. Romantic writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson helped Americans appreciate the aesthetic and recreational value of forests, beyond just their economic importance. The early conservation movement had its roots in these concerns.[20][21]
The British government attempt to restrict westward expansion with the ineffective Proclamation Line of 1763 was cancelled by the new United States government. The first major movement west of the Appalachian Mountains began in Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina as soon as the Revolutionary War was effectively won in 1781. Pioneers housed themselves in a rough lean-to or at most a one-room log cabin. The main food supply at first came from hunting deer, turkeys, and other abundant small game.[22]
Clad in typical frontier garb, leather breeches, moccasins, fur cap, and hunting shirt, and girded by a belt from which hung a hunting knife and a shot pouch – all homemade – the pioneer presented a unique appearance. In a short time he opened in the woods a patch, or clearing, on which he grew corn, wheat, flax, tobacco and other products, even fruit. In a few years the pioneer added hogs, sheep and cattle, and perhaps acquired a horse. Homespun clothing replaced the animal skins. The more restless pioneers grew dissatisfied with over civilized life, and uprooted themselves again to move 50 or hundred miles (80 or 160 km) further west.[23]
The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 doubled the size of the nation. It contained a few small European settlements and large numbers of Native Americans. The federal government had charge of Indian affairs, and one by one purchased Indian lands. Individuals who were willing to assimilate into American society were allowed to remain. Tribes that wanted to keep their self-government kept a small part of their of their land as an Indian reservation and sold the rest to the federal government for an annual subsidy from the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Those tribes east of the Mississippi were usually relocated further west, primarily to Indian Territory (now the state of Oklahoma). See Indian removal[25]
By 1813 the western frontier had reached the Mississippi River. St. Louis, Missouri was the largest town on the frontier, the gateway for travel westward, and a principal trading center for Mississippi River traffic and inland commerce. There was wide agreement on the need to settle the new territories quickly, but the debate polarized over the price the government should charge. The conservatives and Whigs, typified by president John Quincy Adams, wanted a moderated pace that charged the newcomers enough to pay the costs of the federal government. The Democrats, however, tolerated a wild scramble for land at very low prices. The final resolution came in the Homestead Law of 1862, with a moderated pace that gave settlers 160 acres free after they worked on it for five years.[26]
From the 1770s to the 1830s, pioneers moved into the new lands that stretched from Kentucky to Alabama to Texas. Most had operated farmers back east and now relocated in family groups.[27] Historian Louis M. Hacker shows how wasteful the first generation of pioneers was; they were too ignorant to cultivate the land properly and when the natural fertility of virgin land was used up, they sold out and moved west to try again. Hacker describes that in Kentucky about 1812:
Farms were for sale with from ten to fifty acres cleared, possessing log houses, peach and sometimes apple orchards, inclosed in fences, and having plenty of standing timber for fuel. The land was sown in wheat and corn, which were the staples, while hemp [for making rope] was being cultivated in increasing quantities in the fertile river bottoms. ...
Yet, on the whole, it was an agricultural society without skill or resources. It committed all those sins which characterize a wasteful and ignorant husbandry. Grass seed was not sown for hay and as a result, the farm animals had to forage for themselves in the forests; the fields were not permitted to lie in pasturage; a single crop was planted in the soil until the land was exhausted; the manure was not returned to the fields; only a small part of the farm was brought under cultivation, the rest being permitted to stand in timber. Instruments of cultivation were rude and clumsy and only too few, many of them being made on the farm. It is plain why the American frontier settler was on the move continually. It was, not his fear of a too close contact with the comforts and restraints of a civilized society that stirred him into a ceaseless activity, nor merely the chance of selling out at a profit to the coming wave of settlers; it was his wasting land that drove him on. Hunger was the goad. The pioneer farmer's ignorance, his inadequate facilities for cultivation, his limited means, of transport necessitated his frequent changes of scene. He could succeed only with virgin soil.[28]
Hacker adds that the second wave of settlers reclaimed the land, repaired the damage, and practiced a more sustainable agriculture.[29]
Civil War
In the Civil War (1861-1865) more powerful long range rifles and artillery caused high casualty rates of wounding and death. The Union forces had much better medical and hospital facilities, while the supply system failed so often in the Confederacy that for months at a time soldiers marched and fought barefoot, with little medicine available to their overworked doctors. The Union systematically devastated the railway system in the South, and ruined many cotton plantations. Combat operations killed thousands of horses and mules used to pull supplies, artillery and munitions. The South was overwhelmingly rural, with a priority on growing and exporting cotton to textile factories. Most of the food was imported from the North. The Union blockade shut down most of the cotton exports and nearly all of its food imports. The Union cut off many of its internal rail and river travel routes. The main Southern meat supply was pork, but the output was sharply reduced by disease and shortages of feed.[30] Hunger and bad nutrition weakened the Confederacy and led to desertions as Confederate soldiers realized their families were at risk of starvation.[31][32]
The war was largely fought in hot, wet regions hosting numerous pandemic diseases. As a result sickness rates were high on both sides. For both armies disease caused about twice as many deaths as did combat. The main causes of fatality were diarrhea and dysentery, followed by typhoid fever, pneumonia, malaria and smallpox.[33]
Malaria was widespread across the South. The Union army suffered over 1 million cases of malaria, resulting in about 10,000 deaths. It accounted for about 1 in 6 of the 6.5 million episodes of illnesses . More Southerners had immunity but they had many cases and far worse medical treatment. Quinine was the only effective remedy--Union doctors had plenty but the blockade cut off supplies to the South.[34] Ticks, lice and fleas caused much illness in both armies especially Typhus and Relapsing fever.[35]
Of the 3 million horses and mules in military service during the war, about half died. The main causes were battle injuries, overwork, diseases like glanders and lack of proper food and care. In the South the Union army shot horses it did not need to keep them out of Confederate hands.[36][37]
Great Plains 1870s
The population of the Great Plains states, including Minnesota, Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas, grew from 1.0 million in 1870 to 2.4 million in 1880. The number of farms in the region tripled, increasing from 99,000 in 1870 to 302,000 in 1880. The improved acreage (land under cultivation) quintupled, rising from 5.0 million acres to 24.6 million acres during the same period. the new settlers mostly purchased land on generous terms from transcontinental railroads that were given land grants by Washington. They focused on wheat and cattle. This rapid population influx and agricultural expansion was a hallmark of the settlement and development of the Great Plains in the late 19th century, as the region attracted waves of new settlers from Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia, as well as farmers who sold land in older states to move to larger farms.[38][39][40]
In 1870 to 1920, the center of industrialization expanded from New England and the Mid-Atlantic regions into the Midwest to Chicago and St Louis. According to Martin Melosi this became the industrial base of the world's leading industrial power. Environmental degradation, ignored at first, became an increasing concern regarding sewage, garbage, drinking water, and clean air and adequate medical care.. Pollution was caused by primarily by coal. It was the primary energy source to power factories and heat offices and apartments. Its use led to a sharp increase in carbon emissions and air pollution. The concentration of industries such as steel improved efficiency but increased resource waste and pollution of air and water as urban rivers became dumping grounds for industrial waste. Residential overcrowding into tenements led to poor sanitation and more sickness.[41][42][43]
To encourage settlement of western lands, Congress passed the first of several Homestead Acts in 1862, granting parcels in 40-acre (160,000 m2) increments to homesteaders who would maintain a living on the land for five years, and then they would own it. Congress also made huge land grants to various railroads working to complete a transcontinental rail system. The railroad grants included mineral and timber-rich lands so that the railroads could get financing to build. Again, the plan was that the railroads would sell off the land to get money, and the new transportation network would not use taxpayer money.
It turned out that much western land was not suited for homesteading because of mountainous terrain, poor soils, lack of available water, and other problems. By the early 20th century, the federal government held significant portions of most western states that had simply not been claimed for any use. Conservationists prevailed upon President Theodore Roosevelt to set aside lands for forest conservation and for special scientific or natural history interest. Much land still remained unclaimed even after such reserves had been initially set up. The US Department of the Interior held millions of acres in the western states, with Arizona and New Mexico joining the union by 1913. US President Herbert Hoover proposed to deed the surface rights to the unappropriated lands to the states in 1932, but the states complained that the lands had been overgrazed and would also impose a burden during the cash-strapped state budgets.[46] The Bureau of Land Management was created to manage much of that land.
History of conservation and environmentalism
Michael Kraft examines the rise and evolution of conservation and environmental politics and policies. "Conservation" originated in the late 19th century as a movement built around the conservation of natural resources and an attempt to stave off air, water, and land pollution. By the 1970s environmentalism evolved into a much more sophisticated control regime, one that employed the Environmental Protection Agency to slow environmental degradation.[47]
According to Chad Montrie, historians largely agree on the basic points of this account:[48] The conservation of natural resources was a significant topic of debate in the early and mid-20th century, highlighted by a tension between the business sector's push for efficient resource utilization and the advocates for preserving wilderness and natural beauty. In the 1960s and 1970s the conservation movement morphed into modern environmentalism. The seminal moment that ignited the transition occurred in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson's ground breaking book, "Silent Spring." Carson's urgent message warned about the perils of harmful chemical pollutants, notably substances like DDT with immediate benefits but long-term detrimental impacts, resonated with an educated audience deeply concerned about quality of life issues. The environmental awakening spurred by Carson's work was further fueled by events like the 1969 televised oil spill off the California coast.[49] It prompted many to join mainstream environmental organizations led by visionaries such as David Brower of the Sierra Club. The momentum was bolstered by the inaugural Earth Day in 1970. President Richard Nixon took proactive steps through executive actions and collaboration with Congress to enact pivotal legislation establishing regulatory frameworks that curbed air and water pollution and mitigated adverse effects of corporate greed and rampant consumerism. The emergence of a more radical activism came in the late 1970s and early 1980s, exemplified by chemical disaster at Love Canal in 1977, and a battle in 1982 against a PCB toxic waste dump in a Black community in North Carolina.[50] The result was confrontational grassroots environmentalism that marked the genesis of the "environmental justice" movement. It focused on issues of toxic substances and addressing concerns of "environmental racism." The collective efforts during this period laid a foundation for ongoing environmental advocacy and policy development aimed at safeguarding our planet for future generations.
The term "conservation" was coined by American forester Gifford Pinchot in 1907. He told his close friend President Theodore Roosevelt who used it for a national Conference of Governors in 1908 who discussed priorities for conservation.[51]
Origins
The American movement received its inspiration from 19th century Romantic writings that exalted the inherent value of nature, quite apart from human usage. Author Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) made key philosophical contributions that exalted nature. Thoreau was interested in peoples' relationship with nature and studied this by living close to nature in a simple life. He published his experiences in the book Walden, which argued that people should become intimately close with nature.[52] British and German standards were also influential in designing American policies and training. Bernhard Fernow (1851–1923) emigrated from Germany in 1876 and became was the third chief of the Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry, 1886 to 1898. He helped design what in 1905 became the Forest Service. Carl A. Schenck (1868–1955), another German expert, migrated to the United States in 1895 and helped shape the education of foresters.[53]
Progressivism: Efficiency, Equity and Esthetics
According to historians Samuel P. Hays and Clayton Koppes, the conservation movement was launched into the national political arena in 1908 by President Theodore Roosevelt and his top advisor Gifford Pinchot. It represented the essence of the Progressive Era and therefore was driven by the primary values of efficiency, equity, and esthetics. Efficiency was to be achieved by full-time experts in the federal bureaucracy (headed by Pinchot) who would use the latest scientific results to manage the public domain to eliminate waste. These disinterested experts would prevent the corruption sought by selfish business interests. Equity meant that natural resources were the province of all the people and should not be plundered by special interests. Instead, resources should be apportioned broadly and equitably. However "all the people" in practice meant white farm owners and ranchers who obtained a free water supply or access to free grazing land. The esthetic theme was an appeal to and upscale white tourists who wanted a taste of wilderness. Wild and scenic lands should be set aside in national parks, not for their intrinsic value, but to provide free recreation, refresh the spirit weakened by urbanization, and even upgrade "sissies" into virile outdoorsmen. In the Great Depression of the 1930s the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt expanded the E-E-E tradition to include poor whites, with his key advisors being Harry Hopkins and Harold L. Ickes. The main programs reached two million poor unemployed young men through the Civilian Conservation Corps, while the Tennessee Valley Authority to modernize millions of traditional people trapped in an impoverished, isolated region.[54][55][56]
Competing ideologies
Both conservationists and preservationists spoke out in political debates during the Progressive Era (the 1890s–early 1920s), with an opposition emerging in the 1920s. There were three main positions.
Laissez-faire: The laissez-faire position first developed in 1776 by Adam Smith argued that owners of private property—including lumber, oil and mining companies, should be allowed to do anything they wished on their properties. Critics warned that this pro-business policy leads to lower prices, mass consumption, waste, and the exhaustion of natural resources.[57] and[58]
Conservationists: The conservationists, led by Theodore Roosevelt and his close allies George Bird Grinnell and Gifford Pinchot, were motivated by the wanton waste that was taking place at the hand of market forces, including logging and hunting.[59] This practice resulted in placing a large number of North American game species on the edge of extinction. Roosevelt recognized that the laissez-faire approach was too wasteful and inefficient. In any case, they noted, most of the natural resources in the western states were already owned by the federal government. The best course of action, they argued, was a long-term plan devised by national experts to maximize the long-term economic benefits of natural resources. To accomplish the mission, Roosevelt and Grinnell formed the Boone and Crockett Club, whose members were some of the best minds and influential men of the day. Its contingency of conservationists, scientists, politicians, and intellectuals became Roosevelt's closest advisers during his march to preserve wildlife and habitat across North America.[60]
Preservationists: Preservationists, led by John Muir (1838–1914), argued that the conservation policies were not strong enough to protect the interest of the natural world because they continued to focus on the natural world as a source of economic production.
The debate between conservation and preservation reached its peak in the public debates over the construction of California's Hetch Hetchy dam in Yosemite National Park which supplies the water supply of San Francisco. Muir, leading the Sierra Club, declared that the valley must be preserved for the sake of its beauty: "No holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man."
President Roosevelt put conservationist issues high on the national agenda.[61] He worked with all the major figures of the movement, especially his chief advisor on the matter, Gifford Pinchot and was deeply committed to efficiency in conserving natural resources. He encouraged the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902 to promote federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi2 or 930,000 km2) under federal protection. Roosevelt set aside more federal land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.[62]
Roosevelt was a leader in conservation, fighting to end the waste of natural resources.
Gifford Pinchot had been appointed by McKinley as chief of Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture. In 1905, his department gained control of the national forest reserves. Pinchot promoted private use (for a fee) under federal supervision. In 1907, Roosevelt designated 16 million acres (65,000 km2) of new national forests just minutes before a deadline.[63]
In May 1908, Roosevelt sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on natural resources and their most efficient use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty".
In 1903 Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, who had a very different view of conservation, and tried to minimize commercial use of water resources and forests. Working through the Sierra Club he founded, Muir succeeded in 1905 in having Congress transfer the Mariposa Grove and Yosemite Valley to the federal government.[64] While Muir wanted nature preserved for its own sake, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."[65]
Theodore Roosevelt's view on conservationism remained dominant for decades. For example, the New Deal under Franklin D. Roosevelt authorised the building of many large-scale dams and water projects, as well as the expansion of the National Forest System to buy out sub-marginal farms. In 1937, the Pittman–Robertson Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration Act was signed into law, providing funding for state agencies to carry out their conservation efforts.
Environmentalism
"Environmentalism" emerged on the national agenda in 1970, with Republican Richard Nixon playing a major role, especially with his creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. From 1962 to 1998, the grass roots movement founded 772 national organizations focused primarily on environmental protection or pollution abatement.[66] Furthermore many other organizations adopted such goals in addition to their primary goal, such as the American Lung Association. Using a broad definition, Jason T. Carmichael, J. Craig Jenkins, and Robert J. Brulle identified over 6,000 national and regional organizations, plus another 20,000 or more at the local and state levels that were working on behalf of a multitude of environmental causes in the year 2000.[67]
Fears about Agricultural Land Adequacy
According to historian Tim Lehman, concerns were first raised in the 20th century regarding the long-term adequacy of the nation's agricultural lands. At the federal level studies were made and programs were proposed and some launched to preserve farmlands from conversion to other uses. An awareness of the need for agricultural conservation followed a history of agricultural abundance, as seen in the rapid settlement of western lands in the 1850s to 1880s. The new theme emerged in the Progressive conservation movement, in Hugh Hammond Bennett's soil conservation crusade, and the land utilization movement of the 1920s. The New Deal made a major national program of land use planning. A land acquisition program, soil conservation districts, and county land use planning agreement all contained elements of federal agricultural land use planning, but none of these policies were entirely successful. Scarcity issues faded during the 1950s and 1960s as agricultural productivity soared. The publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 energized the environmental movement and brought a new awareness in how industrialized agriculture misused the available land with dangerous chemicals. Decades of suburbanization, rapid national and global population growth, renewed worries about soil erosion, fears of oil and water shortages, and the sudden increase in farm exports beginning in 1972 all were worrisome threats to the long-term supply of good farmland. The Carter administration in the late 1970s supported initiatives like the National Agricultural Lands Survey and liberals in Congress introduced legislation to control suburban sprawl. However the Reagan administration and the Department of Agriculture were opposed to new regulations, and no major program was enacted.[68]
Laissez-faire and the Sagebrush Rebellion
The success of Reagan in 1980 was facilitated by the rise of popular opposition to public lands reform and a return to laissez-faire ideology. For example, out west in the 1970s the Sagebrush Rebellion arose, demanding less environmental regulation.[69][70] Conservatives drew on new organizational networks of think tanks such as The Heritage Foundation, as well as well-funded industry groups, the Republican Party state organizations, and new right-wing citizen-oriented grass-roots organizations. They deployed the traditional strategy based on the rights of owners to control their property; on the protection of mineral extraction rights; and on the right to hunt and recreate and to pursue happiness unencumbered by the federal government at the expense of resource conservation.[71]
Reagan's top appointments in the environment field were James G. Watt as Secretary of the Interior and Anne Gorsuch as head of the EPA.[72] They tried to help the Reagan agenda by slashing spending and lowering morale. Both proved incompetent at the jobs; they picked fights with friends and foes and soon made fools of themselves. Environmentalists seized on their opportunity and made Watt and Gorsuch the centerpiece of their campaigns of ridicule. Reagan realized his mistake and fired the two. He appointed a close friend and troubleshooter, William Clark at Interior. Clark successfully turned off the spotlight and kept the peace. At EPA, Reagan appointed William Ruckelshaus, the EPA's first director and a committed environmentalist. He reversed Gorsuch's policies. Vice President George H. W. Bush typically kept close to Reagan on most issues but in this area he announced that if elected he would be the nation's "environmental president." The long run results of Reagan's two terms were to undermine laissez-faire rhetoric and mobilize the membership, funding and momentum of the environmental movement.[73][74]
Historiographical debates
William Cronon has criticized advocates for assuming that "wilderness" and "nature" have a reality beyond their creation in the human imagination. This has upset many environmentalists.[75] Cronon writes, "wilderness serves as the unexamined foundation on which so many of the quasi-religious values of modern environmentalism rest." He argues that "to the extent that we live in an urban-industrial civilization but at the same time pretend to ourselves that our real home is in the wilderness, to just that extent we give ourselves permission to evade responsibility for the lives we actually lead."[76]
Role of federal government
Interior Department
Organization chart of the Department of Interior as of 2013
Most of the agencies dealing with conservation (before 1970) and environmentalism (since 1970) are based in the Interior Department, formed in 1849.[77]
From the early 1900s to the present, there has been a fierce rivalry over control of forests between the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Interior. From 1905 to the present the main forestry unit has been in the Department of Agriculture.[79][80]
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility coverings all of Tennessee and portions of nearby states. The TVA was created in 1933 as part of a New Deal agency to build dams on the Tennessee River to provide flood control, electricity generation, fertilizer manufacturing, regional planning, economic development to the Tennessee Valley. The region was a very poor part of Appalachia and out of contact with the modern industrial and agricultural economy. Unlike private utility companies TVA was envisioned as regional economic development agency that would work to help modernize the region's economy and society. Its chairman Arthur Morgan was a visionary, who wanted a model for modernizing traditional society. Some New Dealers hoped it would be a model for other regions, but others strongly disagreed and the president was undecided. Any hope for opening "Seven Little TVAs" across the country died when conservatives regained control of Congress in 1938 and ended liberal experimentation.[85][86]
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is an independent federal agency created by an executive order of President President Nixon in 1970 and is part of the executive branch of the government. It reports to the president and was not created by act of Congress.[87] The primary mission of the EPA is to protect human health and safeguard the natural environment (air, water and land) of the nation.[88]
The EPA was established to combine into a single agency many of the existing federal government activities of research and development, monitoring, setting of standards, compliance and enforcement related to protection of the environment. Its most important role is to evaluate every Environmental impact statement that is required whenever a federal role is involved. Thereby EPA has the power to demand changes from most federal agencies to protect the environment according to EPA's standards. In addition, the Environmental impact statement allows a public role—private citizen watchdogs can and often do sue to tie up proposed non-government projects for years.[89]
In 2000 to 2010 the budget held fairly steady at $7.6 to $8.4 billion (with no adjustment for inflation). In terms of objectives, 13% is budgeted for clean air and global climate change, 36% for clean and safe water, 24% for land preservation and restoration, 17% for healthy communities and ecosystems, and 11% for compliance and environmental stewardship.[90] In 2008 it had a staff of about 18,000 people in headquarters and departmental or divisional offices, 10 regional offices, and over 25 laboratories located across the nation. More than half of the staff are engineers, scientists and environmental protection specialists. The others include legal counsel, financial, public affairs and computer specialists.
EPA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
President Nixon, on July 9, 1970, told Congress of his plan to create the EPA by combining parts of three federal departments, three bureaus, three administrations and many other offices into the new single, independent agency to be known as the Environmental Protection Agency.[88] Congress had 60 days to reject the proposal, but opinion was favorable and the reorganization took place without legislation. On December 2, 1970, the EPA was officially established and began operation under director William Ruckelshaus. The EPA began by consolidating 6550 employees from different agencies in several cabinet-level departments into a new agency with a $1.4 billion budget.
Kraft[47] notes that despite its limited charter from 1970, over time EPA has expanded its regulatory function and jousted with the forces of business and economic development. Kraft considers the next major transition in environmental policy to be the process of insuring the "sustainability" of resources through a coalition of interests ranging from policymakers to business leaders, scholars, and individual citizens. At the turn of the 21st century, these often competing groups were wrestling with disparate environmental, economic, and social values.
Russell[91] shows that from 1970 to 1993, the EPA devoted more of its resources to human health issues, notably cancer prevention, than to the protection of nonhuman species. The limited scope of environmental protection was due to a variety of reasons. An institutional culture favored human health issues because most employees were trained in this area. The emphasis on cancer came from the legal division's discovery that judges were more persuaded by arguments about the carcinogenicity of chemicals than by threats to nonhumans. The views of the agency leaders, who followed politically realistic courses, also played an important part in shaping the EPA's direction. Those supporting ecological issues acquired a new tool in the 1980s with the development of risk assessments so that advocates of ecological protection could use language framed by advocates of human health to protect the environment.
Complaints about federal management
Complaints about federal management of public lands constantly roil relations between public lands users (ranchers, miners, researchers, off-road vehicle enthusiasts, hikers, campers and conservation advocates) and the agencies and environmental regulation on the other. Ranchers complain that grazing fees are too high[92] and that grazing regulations are too onerous despite environmentalist complaints that the opposite is true[93] and that promised improvements to grazing on federal lands do not occur. Miners complain of restricted access to claims, or to lands to prospect. Researchers complain of the difficulty of getting research permits, only to encounter other obstacles in research, including uncooperative permit-holders and, especially in archaeology, vandalized sites with key information destroyed. Off-road vehicle users want free access, but hikers and campers and conservationists complain grazing is not regulated enough and that some mineral lease holders abuse other lands or that off-road vehicle destroy the resource. Each complaint has a long history.
White House roles
Theodore Roosevelt presidency 1901-1909
A 1908 editorial cartoon describing Roosevelt's creed as "a practical forester"
Conservation was a minor issue for most presidents. Theodore Roosevelt carved a leadership role that several successors followed.[94]
Roosevelt was a prominent conservationist, putting the issue high on his national agenda.[95] He changed the land by creating 50 wildlife refuges, 18 national monuments, and five national parks, and above all by publicizing conservation issues. Roosevelt's conservation efforts were aimed not just at environment protection, but also at ensuring that society as a whole, rather than just select individuals or companies, benefited from the country's natural resources.[96] His key adviser on conservation matters was Gifford Pinchot, the head of the Bureau of Forestry. Roosevelt increased Pinchot's power over environmental issues by transferring control over national forests from the Department of the Interior to the Bureau of Forestry, which was part of the Agriculture Department. Pinchot's agency was renamed to the United States Forest Service, and Pinchot presided over the implementation of assertive conservationist policies in national forests.[97] Under William Howard Taft, Pinchot had a heavily publicized dispute over environmental policy with Secretary of the Interior Richard A. Ballinger that led to Pinchot's dismissal and to Roosvelt's break with Taft in 1912. [98]
Roosevelt relied on the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902, which promoted federal construction of dams to irrigate small farms and placed 230 million acres (360,000 mi2 or 930,000 km2) under federal protection. In 1906, Congress passed the Antiquities Act, granting the president the power to create national monuments in federal lands. Roosevelt set aside more federal land, national parks, and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined.[99][95] Roosevelt established the Inland Waterways Commission to coordinate construction of water projects for both conservation and transportation purposes, and in 1908 he hosted the Conference of Governors. This was the first time governors had ever met together and the goal was to boost and coordinate support for conservation. Roosevelt then established the National Conservation Commission to take an inventory of the nation's natural resources.[100]
To reach a broad natrional audience of state leaders, and obtain heavy media coverage, President Roosevelt sponsored the first ever Conference of Governors. It was held in the White House May 13–15, 1908. Pinchot, at that time Chief Forester of the U.S., was the primary mover of the conference, and a progressive conservationist, who strongly believed in the scientific and efficient management of natural resources on the federal level. He was also a prime mover of the previous Inland Waterways Commission, which recommended such a meeting the previous October.[101]
The focus of the conference was on natural resources and their proper use. Roosevelt delivered the opening address: "Conservation as a National Duty."[102] Among those speaking were leading industrialists, such as James J. Hill, politicians, and resource experts. Andrew Carnegie, a leading philanthropist was in attendance. The speeches emphasized both the nation's need to exploit renewable resources and the differing situations of the various states, requiring different plans. This Conference was a seminal event in the history of conservationism; it brought the issue to public attention in a highly visible way. The next year saw two outgrowths of the Conference: the National Conservation Commission, which Roosevelt and Pinchot set up with representatives from the states and Federal agencies, and the First National Conservation Commission, which Pinchot led as an assembly of private conservation interests.[103]
Opposition
Roosevelt's policies faced opposition from both liberal environmental activists like John Muir and conservative proponents of laissez-faire like Senator Henry M. Teller of Colorado.[104] While Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club, wanted nature preserved for the sake of pure beauty, Roosevelt subscribed to Pinchot's formulation, "to make the forest produce the largest amount of whatever crop or service will be most useful, and keep on producing it for generation after generation of men and trees."[105] Teller and other opponents of conservation, meanwhile, believed that conservation would prevent the economic development of the West and feared the centralization of power in Washington. The backlash to Roosevelt's ambitious policies prevented further conservation efforts in the final years of Roosevelt's presidency and would later contribute to the Pinchot–Ballinger controversy during the Taft administration. [106]
Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lifelong interest in the environment and conservation starting with his youthful interest in forestry on his family estate. Although he was never an outdoorsman or sportsman on the scale of his distant cousin Theodore Roosevelt, their presidential roles in conservation were comparable.[107] When Franklin was Governor of New York, the Temporary Emergency Relief Administration was a state-level system that became the model for his federal Civilian Conservation Corps, with 10,000 or more men building fire trails, combating soil erosion and planting tree seedlings in marginal farmland in upstate New York. The governor worked closely with Harry Hopkins and in 1933 brought Hopkins to Washington to use the New York experience to shape the national programs of work relief.[108][109]
Roosevelt's New Deal was active in expanding, funding, and promoting the National Park and National Forest systems.[110] Their popularity soared, from three million visitors a year at the start of the decade to 15.5 million in 1939.[111] Every state had its own state parks, and Roosevelt made sure that WPA and CCC projects were set up to upgrade them as well as the national systems.[112][113][114]
From 1933 to 1942 the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrolled 3.4 million young men for six months service. It built 13,000 miles (21,000 kilometres) of trails, planted two billion trees, and upgraded 125,000 miles (201,000 kilometres) of dirt roads. CCC made permanent "improvements" on 118 million acres (triple the size of Connecticut). A 1936 CCC press release claimed it "greatly increased the value of the forest and added to its usefulness to the public," while CCC Director Robert Fechner boasted in his 1939 annual report, the Corps had "constructively altered the landscape of the United States."[115][116] Even more important to the New Deal's ambitions, it clothed, fed, housed and gave medical, dental, and eye care, as well as vigorous outdoor exercise, to unemployed urban youth who needed help that their poverty stricken families could not provide. Furthermore the parents received $25 a month while their sones were away. Likewise Arno B. Cammere, the energetic head of the National Park system, realized that helping solve the unemployment crisis was Roosevelt's main goal. The conservation projects of the Park and Forest services were dramatically expanded.[117]
According to Richard Lowitt, the New Deal Interior Department led by Secretary Harold L. Ickes, emphasized economic benefits from hydroelectric power. The Department sought to build "the foundations for a more stable economy in the West that would expand enormously and bring in its wake a rising standard of living, increased population, and a greater measure of equality with other sections of the country".[118] The New Deal ignored the fears of the upper class purists who realized their single goal of preserving wilderness instead of "improving" it was being undermined.[119]
Wartime and postwar: 1942-1953
When unemployment practically ended in 1942, many of the New Deal agencies closed down permanently, including the WPA and CCC. New conservation programs were put on hold unless they contributed to the war effort. The Army Corps of Engineers turned to military construction and took charge of building the atomic bomb. The TVA played a major role in producing the uranium and plutonium used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Vice President took over when Roosevelt died in April 1945. Truman never enjoyed his youth on the farm and had no interest in the outdoors, nor did his Interior Secretary Oscar L. Chapman. However both Truman and Chapman were keenly aware of the patronage advantages to the Democratic Party in large dam projects. They sponsored a major expansion with no concern for negative environmental impact. After the war ended the Corps of Engineers built 400 dams and 3400 flood control projects, while TVA added 4 dams, and the Bureau of Reclamation added 41.[120][121]
Water projects continued at a fast pace, with 11,000 new dams in the 1950s and 19,000 in the 1960s.[122] The "Big Dam Era" was made possible by very expensive combinations of high dams, powerful turbines, and high-tension long distance transmission lines whereby electrical utilities brought power to customers hundreds of miles away. The era began in the 1930s and was practically over by 1970.[123]
Meanwhile the environmental movement was starting to form. Aldo Leopold published a highly influential book in 1949, A Sand County Almanac, which helped define environmental ethics. It eventually sold more than two million copies.[124]
In terms of ideology, liberals (and the Democratic Party) wanted national control of natural resources—the level at which organized ideological pressures were effective. Conservatives (and the Republican Party) wanted state or local control, whereby the financial benefit to local businesses and jobs could be decisive. In a debate going back to the early 20th century, preservationists wanted to protect the inherent natural beauty of the national parks, whereas economic maximizers wanted to build dams and divert water flows.[125] Eisenhower articulated the conservative position in December 1953, declaring that conservation was not about "locking up and putting resources beyond the possibility of wastage or usage," but instead involved "the intelligent use of all the resources we have, for the welfare and benefit of all the American people."[126][127] Liberals and environmentalists forced the resignation of Secretary of the InteriorDouglas McKay in 1956. He was a businessman with little intererest in the environment who allegedly promoted "giveaways" to mining companies regardless of environmental damage.[128]
Eisenhower's personal activity on environmental issues came in foreign policy. He supported the UN convention of 1958 that provided a strong foundation for international accords governing the use of the world's high seas, especially regarding fishing interests. Eisenhower also promoted the peaceful use of atomic energy for the production of electricity, with strong controls against diversion into nuclear weapons. However, there was little attention to nuclear waste.[129]
President Johnson signs the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act into law, October, 1968. His wife Lady Bird Johnson is in red.
John F Kennedy was a city boy like his constituents. He did not hunt or fish, hike or explore, nor seek out the wilderness. He did greatly enjoy the ocean and the seashore but otherwise the environment and environmentalism bored him.[130][131][132]
When Vice President Lyndon Johnson succeeded the assassinated president in November 1973, he retained Kennedy's staunchly pro-environment Secretary of the Interior, Stewart Udall. Johnson helped pass a series a series of bills designed to protect the environment.[133] He signed into law the Clean Air Act of 1963, which had been proposed by Kennedy. The Clean Air Act set emission standards for stationary emitters of air pollutants and directed federal funding to air quality research.[134] In 1965, the act was amended by the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act, which directed the federal government to establish and enforce national standards for controlling the emission of pollutants from new motor vehicles and engines.[135] In 1967, Johnson and Senator Edmund Muskie led passage of the Air Quality Act of 1967, which increased federal subsidies for state and local pollution control programs.[136]
As First Lady and trusted presidential confidant, Lady Bird Johnson helped establish the public environmental movement in the 1960s. She worked to beautify Washington D.C. by planting thousands of flowers, set up the White House Natural Beauty Conference, and lobbied Congress for the president's full range of environmental initiatives. In 1965, she took the lead in calling for passage of the Highway Beautification Act. The act called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs, along the nation's growing Interstate Highway System and the existing federal-aid primary highway system. It also required certain junkyards along Interstate or primary highways to be removed or screened and encouraged scenic enhancement and roadside development.[146] According to Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall, she single-handedly, "influenced the president to demand-and support-more far-sighted conservation legislation."[147]
Time magazine called Barry Commoner, the "Paul Revere of ecology" for his work on the threats to life from the environmental consequences of fallout from nuclear tests and other pollutants of the water, soil, and air.[148]Time's cover on February 2, 1970, represented a "call to arms", to mobilize public opinion by appeals to fears of chemical pollution of food and water.[149] On April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day took place, which saw 20 million Americans demonstrating peacefully in favor of environmental reform, accompanied by special events held at university campuses across the nation. The huge response to Earth Day convinced Richard Nixon that he could expand his political base by championing the new environmental movement. His instincts were right: there was especially strong popular support for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Clean Air Act of 1970.[149] Polls showed support was high among men and women of all ages, and among conservatives as well as liberals.[150] The media led the stampede. A survey of 21,000 editorials in 5 major newspapers from October 1970 to September 1971 showed that environmental topics were the number one social issue. The top concerns were water quality, land use, air quality and waste disposal.[151][152]
Richard Nixon (President 1969–1975) came late to the conservation movement. Environmental policy had not been a significant issue in the 1968 election, and the media rarely asked about the subject. Nixon broke the silence by highlighting the environment in his State of the Union speech in January 1970:[153]
The great question of the seventies is: shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water? Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later. Clean air, clean water, open spaces—these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.
The president then introduced 36 environmental initiatives, and pushed most of them through. He strongly supported advisors who deeply believed in environmentalism, especially Russell E. Train, John Ehrlichman, William Ruckelshaus, and John C. Whitaker.[154][155][156]
Political scientists Byron Daines and Glenn Sussman identify six major achievements for which they give credit to Nixon.[162]
He broadened the attention span of the Republican Party to include environmental issues, for the first time since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. He thereby "dislodged the Democratic Party from its position of dominance over the environment."
He helped ensure that Congress build a permanent structure supportive of environmentalism, especially the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, which enjoined all federal agencies to help protect the environment.
Nixon appointed a series of strong environmentalists in highly visible positions, most notably William Ruckelshaus, Russell Train, Russell W. Peterson, and John C. Whitaker (who was a senior White House aide for four years, becoming Undersecretary of the Interior in 1973).[163]
Nixon initiated worldwide diplomatic attention to environmental issues, working especially with NATO.
Finally, state: "Nixon did not have to be personally committed to the environment to become one of the most successful presidents in promoting environmental priorities."[164]
Historians pose a strange paradox regarding Nixon. In 1970-1971 he unexpectedly emerged as a great environmentalist who deserves credit for several of the most important environmental laws in American history. By 1972, however, he suddenly moved far to the right, despising environmentalists as left-wing fanatics who would bankrupt the economy.[165][166]
Whirlpool Canyon, which would have been flooded by one of the proposed Echo Park dams
A critical transition took place after World War II that turned these groups into activist organizations working to save the Wilderness. The clientele for the clubs had been an upper-class conservative Republican audience with close ties to big business. They enjoyed expensive and exotic vacations at uncrowded wilderness sites. Mountain climbing was popular. The older leaders retired and were replaced by men with a mission, especially Howard Zahniser at the Wilderness Society in 1945 and David Brower at the Sierra Club in 1952. They were dismayed at the aggressive plans put forward by the "Iron Triangle" that controlled conservation policy. The Iron Triangle was the informal backstage coalition of key members of Congress, plus leaders of the major federal agencies, plus local businessmen keen on speeding up economic development by using natural resources. After a decade of depression and war, the nation was ready to move ahead. The Bureau of Reclamation took the lead with an elaborate plan to develop dams on the Colorado River for the benefit of the economies of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. The centerpiece would be a huge new Echo Park Dam inside Dinosaur National Monument. Zahniser and Brower, working with 30 other groups, launched recruiting drives to bring in middle class members with idealistic goals to fight the destruction of the wilderness at Echo Park. They raised money for staff; mobilized local branches; and flooded the market with glossy magazines featuring nature photography by the likes of Ansel Adams; and petitioned local, state and national politicians. They convinced Congress to delete Echo Park Dam from the Colorado River Storage Project in 1955, but had to agree on an alternative dam site at Glen Canyon Dam. They went on to oppose other grandiose projects. To make their goals permanent Zahniser drafted an ambition "Wilderness Act" designed to permanently protect 50 million acres of wilderness with no commercial activities such as mining or hydroelectric power dams. In the end he achieved a Wilderness Act in 1964 that protected 9 million acres and set a national standard, while mobilizing grass roots voters and setting a model of activism for other national and local organizations to emulate in challenging the Iron Triangle.[168][169][170][171]
The Sierra Club is a major environmental organization. It was founded in May, 1892, by preservationist John Muir (1838–1914). He became the first president, serving for 20 years. The Club did not engage in lobbying. Instead it provided its upscale clientele with outdoor adventures, such as guided tours, wilderness camping and mountain climbing. Reform-minded activists known as the "John Muir Sierrans" wanted a more aggressive role in protecting the environment. They brought in the hyperenergetic and controversial David Brower (1912–2000) as Executive Director 1952 to 1969. [172][173] The Club now became the first large-scale environmental preservation organization in the world, best known for systematic lobbying of politicians to promote environmentalist policies. Major activities include promoting sustainable energy and mitigating global warming, as well as opposition to the use of coal, hydropower, and nuclear power. The organization takes strong positions on issues that sometimes create controversy, criticism, or opposition either internally or externally or both. The club is known for its political endorsements generally supporting liberal and progressive candidates in elections.
Under Brower's leadership, Sierra's membership grew rapidly, from 7,000 in 1952 to 70,000 members in 1969. It was the largest and most prominent conservation organization. Building on the biennial Wilderness Conferences which the Club launched in 1949 together with The Wilderness Society, Brower helped win passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964. Brower and the Sierra Club also led a major battle to stop the Bureau of Reclamation from building two dams that would flood portions of the Grand Canyon. Brower was keen on publicity and sponsored numerous heavily illustrated books to promote knowledge and admiration for the nation's wilderness.[174] On the other hand powerful members of Congress fought for new high dams to use water power to promote the local economy, regardless of the flooding they caused to wilderness areas. Their leader in Congress was Wayne N. Aspinall, the Democrat from western Colorado who dominated the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs as chairman from 1959 to 1973. Brower complained that the environmental movement had seen "dream after dream dashed on the stony continents of Wayne Aspinall." The congressman shot back that the environmentalists were "over-indulged zealots" and "aristocrats" to whom "balance means nothing."[175]
The Wilderness Society is a non-profit conservation organization founded in 1937 by Bob Marshall (1901–1939), who largely funded its startup.[176] It is dedicated to protecting natural areas and federal public lands in the United States and advocates for the designation of federal wilderness areas and other protective designations, such as for national monuments. It calls for balanced uses of public lands, and advocate for federal politicians to enact various land conservation and balanced land use proposals.[177] The Society specializes in issues involving lands under the management of federal agencies; such lands include national parks, national forests, national wildlife refuges, and areas overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. In the early 21st century, the society has been active in fighting recent political efforts to reduce protection for America's roadless and undeveloped lands and wildlife. It was instrumental in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The primary drafter of the Wilderness Act was Howard Zahniser (1906–1964), who served as executive secretary of the Wilderness Society from 1945 until his death.[178] The Wilderness Act led to the creation of the National Wilderness Preservation System, which protects 109 million acres of U.S. public wildlands.[179]
Activism
Ecocentrics
According to Keith Makoto Woodhouse, the ecocentric movement is controversial and internally divided. It rejects the anthropocentric belief that humans are intrinsically superior to other forms of life, and have the right to rule over and manipulate nature.[180]
The ecocentrics focus largely on wilderness preservation. They are highly controversial in their use of direct action-and in their reluctance to engage in standard political activity. For example the Earth First! activists used Tree spiking—driving long spikes into trees that would destroy sawmills and injure workers.[181] "Ecotage" is the crime of sabotage on behalf of the environment.[182]
Environmental justice or eco-justice, is a social movement to address environmental injustice, which occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. [183][184]
The movement began in the United States in the 1980s. It was heavily influenced by the American civil rights movement and focused on environmental racism within rich countries. The movement was later expanded to consider gender, international environmental injustice, and inequalities within marginised groups. As the movement achieved some success in rich countries, environmental burdens were shifted to the Global South (as for example through extractivism or the global waste trade). The movement for environmental justice has thus become more global, with some of its aims now being articulated by the United Nations. The movement overlaps with movements for Indigenous land rights and for the human right to a healthy environment.[185]
The goal of the environmental justice movement is to achieve agency for marginalised communities in making environmental decisions that affect their lives.[186] The global environmental justice movement arises from local environmental conflicts in which environmental defenders frequently confront multi-national corporations in resource extraction or other industries. Local outcomes of these conflicts are increasingly influenced by trans-national environmental justice networks. Environmental justice scholars have produced a large interdisciplinary body of social science literature that includes contributions to political ecology, environmental law, and theories of sustainability.[187]
Environmentalist lawsuits blocking clean air projects
An editorial in The Washington Post on April 6, 2024 discusses the challenges faced by clean energy projects as caused by environmental activists in lawsuits around the United States. One example is the Cardinal-Hickory Creek high-voltage transmission line between Iowa and Wisconsin. It would connect over 160 renewable energy facilities producing 25 gigawatts of green power. It is facing a temporary halt due to a lawsuit by environmental groups condemning its impact on the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. The editorial argues this is just one example of the conflicts between environmental protection and the need for new infrastructure to support the clean energy transition. Solar, wind, and carbon capture projects often face opposition from conservation groups. The permitting process, established by laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), generally leans against developers and allows virtually anyone to challenge projects in court on environmental grounds. This leads to lengthy delays and increased costs for clean energy projects. Researchers found that nearly two-thirds of solar energy projects, 31% of transmission lines, and 38% of wind energy projects that completed federal environmental impact studies between 2010-2018 were litigated. The editorial says that many environmental concerns are valid, but the permitting process does not reasonably weigh the costs and benefits of building essential clean energy infrastructure. It needs to be streamlined to accelerate the clean power expansion required to meet emissions reduction goals. The editorial concludes that Congress should reform the permitting process and preempt state and local rules that make it harder to build high-priority clean energy projects.[188]
^Richard W. Judd, Second nature: An Environmental History of New England (2014), pp.69–94.
^A standard history is Howard S. Russell, A long, deep furrow: Three centuries of farming in New England (1976), chapters 1–3, and 520–551. online
^Carolyn Merchant, The Columbia guide to American environmental history (2002) pp. 24–37.
^William Cronon, Changes in the Land, Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983) pp. 108–112, 127-130.
^ abGordon, Robert B. (2001). American Iron, 1607-1900. JHU Press. ISBN0801868165.
^Mulholland, James A. (1981). History of Metals in Colonial America. University of Alabama Press. ISBN0817300538.
^Knowles, Anne Kelly (2013). Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry, 1800-1868. University of Chicago Press. p. 76. ISBN978-0226448596.
^Merchant, Carolyn (2007). American Environmental History: An Introduction. Columbia University Press. ISBN978-0231140355.
^ Janet Greenlees, When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries (Rutgers UP, 2019) pp.12–14 and passim.
^Janet Greenlees, Janet. "‘For the Convenience and Comfort of the Persons Employed by them’: The Lowell Corporation Hospital, 1840–1930." Medical history 57.1 (2013): 45-64. online
^Priscilla Long, Where the Sun Never Shines: A History of America's Bloody Coal Industry (1989).
^See Paul A. Shackel, The Ruined Anthracite: Historical Trauma in Coal Mining Communities (U of Illinois Press, 2023); Donald L. Miller and Richard E. Sharpless, The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields (U of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).
^Paul H. Rakes, "West Virginia Coal Mine Fatalities: The Subculture of Danger and a Statistical Overview of the Pre-enforcement Era," West Virginia History, Spring 2008, Vol. 2 Issue 1, pp. 1–26
^Mark Aldrich, "Energy transitions and the workplace cost of carbon fuels, 1917–1940." Labor History 60.4 (2019): 325-338.
^Frederick Starr, "American forests - Their destruction and preservation" (1865) online p. 211
^Michael Williams, "Clearing the United States forests: pivotal years 1810-1860," Journal of Historical Geography 8#1 (1982) 12-28 at p. 25.
^Thomas R. Cox et al., This Well-Wooded Land: Americans and Their Forests from Colonial Times to the Present (1985) pp.111–153
^Alan Wexler, and Molly Braun, Atlas of westward expansion (1995) pp. 8–56 online.
^Charles H. Ambler and Festus P. Summers, West Virginia, the mountain state (1958) p. 55.
^Wexler and Braun, Atlas, pp. 26–45, 85–96, 121–126, 182–189.
^John R. Van Atta, Securing the West: Politics, Public Lands, and the Fate of the Old Republic, 1785–1850 (Johns Hopkins University Press; 2014)
^Ray Allen Billington and Martin Ridge, Westward Expansion (5th ed. 1982) pp. 203–328, 747–66
^Louis Morton Hacker, "Western Land Hunger and the War of 1812: A Conjecture", Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1924) 10#4 pp. 365–95, quote on pp. 369–71 in JSTOR
^Hacker, "Western Land Hunger and the War of 1812."
^ Paul W. Gates, Agriculture and the Civil War (1962) pp.73–125. online
^Judkin Browning and Timothy Silver, An Environmental History of the Civil War (U of North Carolina Press, 2020). online see also online review of this book
^Erin Stewart Mauldin, Unredeemed Land : An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South (Oxford UP, 2018)
^Stanley B. Burns, "Disease" Behind the Lens: A History in Pictures (PBS, 2021) online
^ Lloyd Klein and Eric Wittenberg, " The decisive influence of malaria on the outcome of Grant’s Vicksburg campaign of 1863" Hektoen International: A Journal of Medical Humanities (Winter 2023) online
^"How Parasites Changed the American Civil War" National Museum of Civil War Medicine (June 1, 2018) online
^ "Heroes with Hooves" (Stones River National Battlefield Tennessee, National Park Service, 2020) online
^G. Terry Sharrer, "The Great Glanders Epizootic, 1861-1866: A Civil War Legacy." Agricultural History, 69#1 (1995), pp. 79–97. online
^Gilbert Fite. The Farmers' Frontier, 1865-1900 (1966) pp 53-54.
^Gilbert C. Fite, "Great Plains farming: A century of change and adjustment." Agricultural History 51.1 (1977): 35–39, 56, 244-256.
^David J. Wishart, ed. Encyclopedia of the Great Plains(U of Nebraska Press, 2004) pp. 217–25, 807–808.
^Martin V. Melosi, Pollution & Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930 (1980), pp.3–31 .
^Martin V. Melosi, Coping with Abundance: Energy and Environment in Industrial America (Temple UP, 1985) pp.15–86.
^Martin V. Melosi, Effluent America: Cities, Industry, Energy, and the Environment (2001)
online
^For a brief overview see Stephen Zimmet, The public domain : its place in our history, its place today, its place in our future; a brief historical sketch of the great land inheritance and how it has enhanced a nation (Bureau of Land Management, 1966) online in 8 pages
^For more detail see Roy M. Robbins, Our landed heritage : the public domain, 1776-1936 (1942) online
^ abKraft, Michael E. (2000). "U.S. Environmental Policy and Politics: from the 1960s to the 1990s". Journal of Policy History. 12 (1): 17–42. doi:10.1353/jph.2000.0006. ISSN0898-0306.
^James Graham Lewis, Trained by Americans in American ways: The establishment of forestry education in the United States, 1885–1911 (PhD dissertation, Florida State University; ProQuest Dissertations, 2001). 3005625.
^Thomas G. Smith, "Kennedy, Stewart Udall, and New Frontier Conservation" Pacific Historical Review 64#3 (1995), pp. 329-362 at p. 330.
^Clayton Koppes, "Efficiency/Equity/Esthetics: Towards a Reinterpretation of American Conservation" Environmental Review (1987) 11#2 pp. 127-146 online
^2SamuelP. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (1959) pp. 2-3, 5, 49.
^J. Leonard Bates, "Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907 to 1921" Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1957) 44#1 (1957), pp. 29-57, especially p.30. online
^Samuel P. Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (1959), p. 124.
^Benjamin Redekop, "Embodying the Story: The Conservation Leadership of Theodore Roosevelt" in Leadership (2015). DOI: 10.1177/1742715014546875. onlineArchived 2016-01-14 at the Wayback Machine
^Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground, (1947) p. 32.
^Erik W. Johnson, and Scott Frickel, "Ecological Threat and the Founding of U.S. National Environmental Movement Organizations, 1962–1998," Social Problems 58 (2011), 305–29. online
^Jason T. Carmichael, J. Craig Jenkins, and Robert J. Brulle. "Building environmentalism: The founding of environmental movement organizations in the United States, 1900–2000." Sociological Quarterly 53.3 (2012): 422-453.
^Tim Lehman, Public values, private lands: Farmland preservation policy, 1933-1985 (UNC Press Books, 1995); also see online book review.
^R. McGreggor Cawley, Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics (UP of Kansas, 1993). online
^James Morton Turner and Andrew C. Isenberg, The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump (Harvard UP, 2018)
^James Morton Turner, " 'The Specter of Environmentalism': Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right," Journal of American History 96.1 (2009): 123-47, https://doi.org/10.2307/27694734
^See Samuel P. Hays, Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955-1985 (1987) pp.491-526 on the Reagan era.
^Russell, III, Edmund P. (1997). "Lost among the Parts per Billion: Ecological Protection at the United States Environmental Protection Agency, 1970-1993". Environmental History. 2 (1): 29–51. doi:10.2307/3985560. JSTOR3985560. ISSN1084-5453.
^Colman (2021), "The coalition accused the so-called "Group of Ten" environmental organizations -- Sierra Club, Audubon, National Wildlife Federation, Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, Izaak Walton League, The Wilderness Society, National Parks and Conservation Association, Natural Resources Defense Council and Earthjustice, then known as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund -- of "disruption of our communities.".
^Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (1993) pp.40–45
^Mark W. T. Harvey, "Echo Park, Glen Canyon, and the Postwar Wilderness Movement." Pacific Historical Review (1991) 60#1, pp.43–67. online
^Debra E. Jenson, "The Campaign Against Echo Park Dam and Collective Action Frame Theory: A Historical Analysis." Southwestern Mass Communication Journal 25.2 (2010) pp.69–81. online.
^Mark W. T. Harvey, A Symbol of Wilderness: Echo Park and the American Conservation Movement (U of New Mexico Press, 1994).
^Teea Kortetmäki, "Anthropocentrism versus ecocentrism revisited: Theoretical confusions and practical conclusions." SATS 14.1 (2013): 21-37.
^Keith Makoto Woodhouse, The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism (2018).
^Derek G. Ross, "Monkeywrenching plain language: Ecodefense, ethics, and the technical communication of ecotage." IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 58.2 (2015): 154-175 online.
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Brinkley, Douglas (2017). Rightful Heritage: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Land of America. Harper Perennial. ISBN978-0062089250.
Brinkley, Douglas (2022). Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening. Harper. ISBN978-0063212916.
Leshy, John (2009). "FDR's Expansion of Our National Patrimony: A Model for Leadership". In Woolner, David; Henderson, Henry L. (eds.). FDR and the Environment. Springer. pp. 177–178. ISBN978-0-230-10067-1.
Mackenzie, G. Calvid; Weisbrot, Robert (2008). The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s. Penguin Books. ISBN978-0143115465.
Martinez-Alier, Joan (2002). The Environmentalism of the Poor: A Study of Ecological Conflicts and Valuation. Edward Elgar. doi:10.4337/9781843765486. ISBN9781840649093.
Schlosberg, David (2002). "3: The Justice of Environmental Justice: Reconciling Equity, Recognition, and Participation in a Political Movement". In Light, Andrew; de-Shalit, Avner (eds.). Moral and Political Reasoning in Environmental Practice. Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press. pp. 77–107. ISBN0-262-62164-9.
Sturgeon, Stephen Craig (2002). The politics of western water: the congressional career of Wayne Aspinall. University of Arizona Press. p. xiv. ISBN978-0816521609.
Allaby, Michael, and Chris Park, eds. A dictionary of environment and conservation (Oxford University Press, 2013), with a British emphasis.
Allitt, Patrick. A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism (2014), wide-ranging scholarly history since 1950s blurb
Allosso, Dan. American Environmental History (2nd edition parts one and two, 2017) a moralistic basic survey; well illustrated; ISBN1981731733
Andrews, Richard N.L., Managing the Environment, Managing Ourselves: A History of American Environmental Policy (Yale UP, 1999)
Bates, J. Leonard. "Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907 to 1921", Mississippi Valley Historical Review (1957) 44#1 pp. 29–57. in JSTOR
Becher, Anne. American environmental leaders: From colonial times to the present (2 vol. ABC-CLIO, 2000) 320 brief biographies; vol 1 online
Black, Brian C., and Donna L. Lybecker. Great Debates in American Environmental History (2 vol. Greenwood, 2008), covers 150 topics in encyclopedic fashion with pro and con arguments. online book review
Block, Walter. "Environmentalism and economic freedom: the case for private property rights." Journal of Business Ethics (1998): pp. 1887-1899. argues for laissez-faire policies.
Browning, Judkin, and Timothy Silver. An Environmental History of the Civil War (U of North Carolina Press, 2020). online see also online review of this book
Brulle, Robert J. "Politics and the Environment." Handbook of politics: State and society in global perspective (2010): 385-406. online
Burch, Jr., John R. Water Rights and the Environment in the United States (ABC-CLIO 2015), a comprehensive documentary and reference guide to historical water issues.
Carmichael, Jason T., J. Craig Jenkins, and Robert J. Brulle. "Building environmentalism: The founding of environmental movement organizations in the United States, 1900–2000." Sociological Quarterly 53.3 (2012): 422-453 online.
Cohen, Michael P. The History of the Sierra Club, 1892-1970 (1988) online
Cox, Thomas R., et al. This well-wooded land: Americans and their forests from colonial times to the present (1985) online
Cox, Thomas R. "Americans and their forests: Romanticism, progress, and science in the late nineteenth century." Journal of Forest History 29.4 (1985): 156-168. online
Dauvergne, Peter. The A to Z of Environmentalism (Scarecrow, 2009), worldwide coverage; online
Decker, Jefferson. The Other Rights Revolution: Conservative Lawyers and the Remaking of American Government (Oxford UP, 2016), legal opponents of environmentalism; ch. 4 on Sagebrush Rebelliononline
Dewey, Scott. "Working-Class Environmentalism in America" Oxford Research Encyclopedia (2019) online
Dewey, Scott. "Don't Breathe the Air": Air Pollution and U.S. Environmental Politics, 1945-1970 (Texas A&M UP, 2000).
Drake, Brian Allen, ed. The Blue, the Gray, and the Green: Toward an Environmental History of the Civil War (U of Georgia Press, 2015) online
Fiege, Mark. The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States (2022) online, scholar looks at environment's role in nine famous events, such as the Civil War, transcontinental railroad and segregation.
Golze, Alfred R. Reclamation in the United States (2nd ed. 1961) online
Hay, Peter, ed. Main currents in western environmental thought (Indiana UP, 2002). online
Hays, Samuel P.Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement 1890–1920 (Harvard UP, 1959), influential pioneer study online
Hays, Samuel P.Beauty, Health, and Permanence: Environmental Politics in the United States, 1955–1985 (1987), a standard scholarly history;online with new preface
Hays, Samuel P. A History of Environmental Politics since 1945 (2000), online a short survey
Johnson, Erik W., and Scott Frickel. "Ecological Threat and the Founding of U.S. National Environmental Movement Organizations, 1962–1998," Social Problems 58 (2011), 305–29. online
Krech III, Shepard. The ecological Indian : myth and history (1999) controversial among experts. online
Krech III, Shepard. "Reflections on conservation, sustainability, and environmentalism in indigenous North America." American anthropologist 107.1 (2005): 78-86.
Lehman, Tim. Public Values, Private Lands: American Farmland Preservation Policy, 1933-1985 (U of North Carolina Press, 1995)
McCright, Aaron M., Chenyang Xiao, and Riley E. Dunlap. "Political polarization on support for government spending on environmental protection in the USA, 1974–2012." Social science research 48 (2014): 251-260. online
McGurty, Eileen Maura. "Warren County, NC, and the emergence of the environmental justice movement: Unlikely coalitions and shared meanings in local collective action." Society & Natural Resources 13.4 (2000): 373-387. DOI:10.1080/089419200279027
Magoc, Chris J. Chronology of Americans and the Environment (2011)
Mauch, Christof, and Thomas Zeller, eds. Rivers in history: perspectives on waterways in Europe and North America (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2008).
Melosi, Martin V. Pollution & Reform in American Cities, 1870-1930 (1980).
Melosi, Martin V. Coping with Abundance: Energy and Environment in Industrial America (Temple UP, 1985) *Melosi, Martin V. Effluent America: Cities, Industry, Energy, and the Environment (2001)online
Melosi, Martin V. Garbage in the Cities: Refuse Reform and the Environment (U of Pittsburgh Press. 2004).
Melosi, Martin V. Precious Commodity : Providing Water for America's Cities (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2011)
Merchant, Carolyn. American environmental history: An introduction (Columbia UP, 2007), a slightly revised 2nd edition; the first edition was published as The Columbia guide to American environmental history (Columbia UP, 2002). online 2007 edition
Miller, Char. The Atlas of U.S. and Canadian Environmental History (2012)
Nash, Roderick. The Rights of Nature: A History of Environmental Ethics (U of Wisconsin Press, 1989)
Nash, Roderick. Wilderness and the American Mind, (4th ed. 2001), a standard intellectual history of the concept of wilderness
Paehlke, Robert, ed. Conservation and environmentalism: an encyclopedia (Garland, 1995). online
Pyne, Stephen. Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire (Princeton UP, 1982). online
Rosier, Paul C. Environmental Justice in North America (Routledge, 2024) online book review
Rome, Adam. Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism (2001) online
Rothman, Hal K. The Greening of a Nation? Environmentalism in the United States since 1945 (Harcourt Brace, 1998). ISBN0155028553.
Ryder, Andrew. "Liberal economics and the rise of laissez-faire ecology," Economic Affairs (January 2010) doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2010.02008.x
Sale, Kirkpatrick. The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement, 1962–1999 (Hill & Wang, 1993) online
Sandler, Ronald, and Phaedra C. Pezzullo, eds. Environmental Justice and Environmentalism: The Social Justice Challenge to the Environmental Movement (MIT Press, 2007)
Scheffer, Victor B. The Shaping of Environmentalism in America (1991).
Steinberg, Ted. Down to Earth: Nature's Role in American History (Oxford UP, 2002)
Stradling, David. Smokestacks and Progressives: Environmentalists, Engineers, and Air Quality in America,. 1881-1951 (John Hopkins UP, 1999).
Strong, Douglas H. Dreamers & Defenders: American Conservationists. (1988) biographical studies of the major leaders
Taylor, Dorceta E. The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection (Duke UP, 2016) online
Turner, James Morton, " 'The Specter of Environmentalism': Wilderness, Environmental Politics, and the Evolution of the New Right. Journal of American History 96.1 (2009): 123–47 online
Unger, Nancy C., Beyond Nature's Housekeepers: American Women in Environmental History. (Oxford UP, 2012)
Whitney, Gordon G. From Coastal Wilderness to Fruited Plain: A History of Environmental Change in Temperate North America from 1500 to the Present (1994)
Williams, Michael. (1989) Americans and Their Forests: A Historical Geography (Cambridge UP), a major scholarly study
Williams, Michael. "Clearing the United States forests: pivotal years 1810–1860," Journal of Historical Geography 8#1 (1982) 12–28. online
Woodhouse, Keith Makoto. The Ecocentrists: A History of Radical Environmentalism (2018)
Bryce, Emma. "America's Greenest Presidents' New York Times Sept 20, 2012; a poll of scholars ranks Theodore Roosevelt as #1 followed by Nixon, Carter, Obama, Jefferson, Ford, FDR, and Clinton online
Blumm, Michael C. "The Nation's First Forester-in-Chief: The Overlooked Role of FDR and the Environment." Journal of Land Use & Environmental Law 33 (2017): 25–60. A review of Brinkley (2016). online
Bureau of Reclamation. "Bureau of Reclamation: A Very Brief History" (2024) online
Cannon, Jonathan, and Jonathan Riehl. "Presidential greenspeak: How presidents talk about the environment and what it means." Stanford Environmental Law Journal 23 (2004): 195–272. online
Cawley, R. M. Federal land, western anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and environmental politics (UP Kansas, 1993). online
Clements, Kendrick A. "Herbert Hoover and conservation, 1921-33." American Historical Review 89.1 (1984): 67-88. online
Coodley, Gregg, and David Sarasohn. The Green Years, 1964–1976: When Democrats and Republicans United to Repair the Earth (UP of Kansas, 2021) online
Cutright, Paul Russell. Theodore Roosvelt the naturalist (1956) online
Cutright, Paul Russell. Theodore Roosevelt: The Making of a Conservationist (U of Illinois Press, 1985) online
Engelbert, Ernest A. "Political Parties and Natural Resources Policies-An Historical Evaluation, 1790-1950." Natural Resources Journal 1 (1961): 226+ online
Flippen, J. Brooks. "Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism" (LSU Press, 2006)
Gates. Paul W. History of Public Land Law Development (1968) a major scholarly history online
Graham Jr., Otis L. Presidents and the American Environment (UP of Kansas, 2015) online
King, Judson. The Conservation Fight, From Theodore Roosevelt to the Tennessee Valley Authority (2009)
Klyza, Christopher McGrory. "Power, partisanship, and contingency: the president and US environmental policy." in Handbook of US Environmental Policy (Edward Elgar, 2020).
Klyza, Christopher McGrory, and David J. Sousa. American environmental policy (2nd ed. MIT Press, 2013). online
Koppes, Clayton R. "Environmental policy and American liberalism: the Department of the Interior, 1933–1953." Environmental Review 7.1 (1983): 17-53.
Kotlowski, Dean J.; "Richard Nixon and the Origins of Affirmative Action" The Historian. (1998) 60#3 pp. 523 ff.
Kotlowski, Dean J. "Deeds Versus Words: Richard Nixon and Civil Rights Policy." New England Journal of History 1999–2000 56(2–3): 122–144.
Kraft Michael E. "U.S. Environmental Policy and Politics: From the 1960s to the 1990s" Journal of Policy History (2000) 12#1 :17-42. doi:10.1353/jph.2000.0006
Kraft Michael E. U.S. Environmental Policy and Politics (6th ed. Pearson, 2015 ) excerpt
Landy, Marc K. et al. The Environmental Protection Agency: From Nixon to Clinton (2nd ed. Oxford UP, 1994)
Layzer, Judith A. Open for Business : Conservatives' Opposition to Environmental Regulation (2012) online
Lindstrom, Matthew J. ed. Encyclopedia of the U.S. Government and the Environment (2 vol ABC-CLIO, 2010), 950pp
Macekura, Stephen. "The limits of the global community: the Nixon administration and global environmental politics." Cold War History 11.4 (2011): 489–518.
Melosi, Martin V. "Environmental Policy" in A Companion to Lyndon B. Johnson, ed. by Mitchell B. Lerner. (Blackwell, 2012) pp. 187–209.
Melosi, Martin V. "Lyndon Johnson and Environmental Policy,' in Robert Divine, ed., The Johnson Years, Volume Two: Vietnam, The Environment and Science (U of Kansas Press, 1987), pp.113–149
Miller, Char. Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (2001)
Peterson, Tarla Rai, ed. Green Talk in the White House: The Rhetorical Presidency Encounters Ecology (Texas A&M UP, 2004) excerpt
Phillips, Sarah T. This Land, This Nation: Conservation, Rural America, and the New Deal (2007)
Pinkett, Harold T. Gifford Pinchot: Private and Public Forester (U of Illinois Press, 1970).
Shallat, Todd. Structures in the stream: Water, science, and the rise of the US Army Corps of Engineers (University of Texas Press, 2010).
Short, C. Brant. Ronald Reagan and the Public Lands: America's Conservation Debate (1989).
Smith, Frank E. The Politics of Conservation (1966), focus on federal water issues and dams, especially TVA. see online review
Soden, Dennis, ed. The Environmental Presidency (SUNY, 1999) online
Steen, Harold K. The US forest service: A centennial history (U of Washington Press, 2013). online
Stine, Jeffrey K. "Natural Resources and Environmental Policy." in The Reagan Presidency: Pragmatic Conservatism and Its Legacies, ed. by W. Elliot Brownlee and Hugh David Graham (Kansas UP, 2003) pp. 233–256.
Sussman, Glen, and Byron W. Daynes. "Spanning the century: Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and the environment." White House Studies 4.3 (2004): 337-355. online
Swain, Donald C. National Conservation Policy: Federal Conservation Policy, 1921-1933 (U of California Press, 1963) online
Utley, Robert M. and Barry Mackintosh; The Department of Everything Else: Highlights of Interior History (Dept. of the Interior, 1989) online
Woolner, David, and H. Henderson, eds. FDR and the Environment (Springer, 2015) online.
Brosnan, Kathleen A. et al. eds. City of Lake and Prairie: Chicago's Environmental History (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) online
Castaneda, Christopher J., and Lee M. A. Simpson, eds. River city and valley life: an environmental history of the Sacramento region (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2013) in California; online
Cawley, R. McGreggor. Federal Land, Western Anger: The Sagebrush Rebellion and Environmental Politics (1993), on conservatives
Cowdrey, Albert E. This Land, This South: An Environmental History (UP of Kentucky, 1995). online
Cronon, William, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (W.W. Norton, 1991); influential classic see online commentary
Cumbler, John T. Reasonable use: The people, the environment, and the state. New England 1790-1930. (Oxford UP, 2001).
Cumbler, John T. Northeast and Midwest United States: An Environmental History (ABC-CLIO, 2005) online
Cunfer, Geoff, and Bill Waiser, eds. Bison and people on the North American Great Plains: A deep environmental history (Texas A&M UP, 2016) online.
Dant, Sara. Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West. (U of Nebraska Press, 2023). online, also see online book review
Davis, D. E., ed. Southern United States: An Environmental History (ABC-CLIO, 2006) online
Deslatte, Aaron. "Florida's growth management experience: From top-down direction to Laissez-Faire land use." in The Palgrave Handbook of Sustainability (2018): 739-755 online.
Flores, Dan. The natural west: Environmental history in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains (U of Oklahoma Press, 2003) online.
Fradkin, Philip. A River No More: The Colorado River and the West (1981)
Frehner, Brian, and Kathleen A. Brosnan, eds. The Greater Plains: Rethinking a Region's Environmental Histories (U of Nebraska Press, 2021) online.
Harrison, Blake, et al. A Landscape History of New England (2011)
Harvey, Mark W. T. "Echo Park, Glen Canyon, and the postwar wilderness movement." Pacific Historical Review (1991): 43-67. online Colorado River region
Jacobs, Elizabeth T., Jefferey L. Burgess, and Mark B. Abbott. "The Donora smog revisited: 70 years after the event that inspired the clean air act." American journal of public health 108.S2 (2018): S85-S88. online the fatal 1948 Donora smog in Pennsylvania in 1948.
Judd, Richard W. Second nature: An Environmental History of New England (2014)
Judd, Richard W. Common Lands and Common People, The Origins of Conservation in Northern New England (1997) online
Klyza, Christopher McGrory et al. The Story of Vermont : A Natural and Cultural History (2nd ed. 2015)
Mauldin, Erin Stewart. Unredeemed Land : An Environmental History of Civil War and Emancipation in the Cotton South (Oxford UP, 2018)
Melosi, Martin V., and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 8: Environment (2007); 320pp with 98 short essays by experts. blurb
Melosi, Martin V. Fresh Kills: A History of Consuming and Discarding in New York City (Columbia UP, 2020).
Melosi, Martin V., and Joseph A. Pratt. Energy Metropolis : An Environmental History of Houston and the Gulf Coast (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2007)
Reisner, Marc. Cadillac desert: The American West and its disappearing water (Penguin, 1993) says the villain was the federal Bureau of Reclamation see [1]; also see online copy.
Rice, James D. Nature and History in the Potomac Country: From Hunter-Gatherers to the Age of Jefferson (2009), near Washington DC
Sayen, Jamie. Children of the Northern Forest: Wild New England's History from Glaciers to Global Warming (Yale UP, 2023). the story of northern New England's undeveloped forests
Turk, Eleanor L. "Selling the Heartland: Agents, Agencies, Press, and Policies Promoting German Emigration to Kansas in the Nineteenth Century." Kansas History 12 (1989): 150-59.
Vogel, David. California greenin': How the Golden State became an environmental leader (Princeton UP, 2019).
Wexler, Alan, and Molly Braun, Atlas of westward expansion (1995) online.
Wild, Peter. Pioneer Conservationists of Western America (1979) online
Worster, Donald. Under Western Skies: Nature and History in the American West (Oxford UP, 1992) online
Zimring, Carl A., and Steven H. Corey, eds. Coastal Metropolis: Environmental Histories of Modern New York City (U of Pittsburgh Press, 2021) [2].
Historiography
Coates, Peter. "Emerging from the Wilderness (or, from Redwoods to Bananas): Recent Environmental History in the United States and the Rest of the Americas," Environment and History 10 (2004), pp. 407–38 online
Hendricks, Rickey L. "The Conservation Movement: A Critique of Historical Sources." History Teacher 16#1 (1982), pp. 77–104. online
Hersey, Mark D., and Ted Steinberg, eds. A Field on Fire: The Future of Environmental History (2019).
Lee, Lawrence B. "100 years of reclamation historiography." Pacific Historical Review 47.4 (1978): 507-564.online; Covers 1) irrigation , 1878-1902, 2) reclamation service, 3) agricultural settlement, 1902–28, 4) engineering 1887-1953, 5) Department of Agriculture, 1898-1938, 6) historians, 1898-1978, and 7) challenges to Bureau
Lynch, Tom, et al. eds. The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place (U of Georgia Press, 2011), focus on literature; online
Sackman, Douglas Cazaux, ed. A Companion to American Environmental History (2010), 696pp; 33 essays by scholars that emphasize the historiography; online
Burch, Jr., John R. Water Rights and the Environment in the United States (ABC-CLIO 2015), a comprehensive documentary and reference guide to historical water issues.
Foss, Philip O. ed. Conservation in the United States A Documentary History : Recreation (1971) online 808pp covering parks, hunting, fishing, forests, lakes, highway beautification
McHenry, Robert and Charles Van Doren, eds. A documentary history of conservation in America (Praeger, 1972) online
McKibben, Bill, ed.American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau, (Library of America, 2008); 1080 pages of excerpts from 96 authors, plus 82 illustrations.
Magoc, Chris J. ed. Environmental issues in American history : a reference guide with primary documents (2006)
Merchant, Carolyn, ed., Major problems in American environmental history: documents and essays (1993).
Nash, American environmentalism : readings in conservation history (3rd ed. 1990)
Nicoll, Don. "Train, Russell oral history interview." (1999). online
Smith, Frank E. ed. Conservation in the United States: A Documentary History: Land and Water 1900-1970 (1971), 785pp
Stoll, Steven, ed. U.S. Environmentalism since 1945: A Brief History with Documents (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006)
Stradling, David, ed. Conservation in the Progressive Era: Classic Texts (U of Washington Press, 2004)
Wells, Christopher W. ed. Environmental Justice in Postwar America A Documentary Reader (2018)
St. John'sCityCity of St. John'sTop - St. John's Skyline, Middle left - The Rooms, Bottom left - Water Street, Right - Cabot Tower BenderaJulukan: The City of LegendsMotto: Avancez (English: Go forward)Country KanadaProvinceTemplat:NLCensus division1Founded24 June 1497Established5 August 1583 by Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth IPemerintahan • JenisCity Council • MayorDennis O'Keefe • Governing bodySt. John's City Council • M...
Wappen Deutschlandkarte ? Hilfe zu Wappen 50.7144444444447.6455555555556297Koordinaten: 50° 43′ N, 7° 39′ O Basisdaten Bundesland: Rheinland-Pfalz Landkreis: Altenkirchen (Westerwald) Verbandsgemeinde: Altenkirchen-Flammersfeld Höhe: 297 m ü. NHN Fläche: 1,67 km2 Einwohner: 102 (31. Dez. 2022)[1] Bevölkerungsdichte: 61 Einwohner je km2 Postleitzahl: 57610 Vorwahl: 02681 Kfz-Kennzeichen: AK Gemeindeschlüssel: 07 1...
Leon Powe Informações pessoais Nome completo Leon Powe Jr. Data de nasc. 22 de Janeiro de 1984 Local de nasc. Oakland, California, Estados Unidos Altura 2,03 m Peso 109 kg Informações no clube Clube atual Aposentado Posição Pivô Clubes de juventude Oakland Techinical High School Leon Powe Jr. (Oakland,Califórnia, em 22 de janeiro de 1984) é um ex-jogador profissional estadunidense de basquetebol, foi campeão da NBA pelos Boston Celtics. Carreira Draft e Boston Celtics Depois d...
Este artigo não cita fontes confiáveis. Ajude a inserir referências. Conteúdo não verificável pode ser removido.—Encontre fontes: ABW • CAPES • Google (N • L • A) (Fevereiro de 2011) Magnum Light Phaser A Magnum Light Phaser é uma pistola de luz criada em 1987 para o computador ZX Spectrum. Uma versão também foi lançado para o Commodore 64/128. Foi da Amstrad o último periférico para o console de videogame. A Magnum...
Irish folk musician Not to be confused with the American musician or the Australian musician. Paul KellyPaul Kelly performing in Dublin, May 2010Background informationBorn1957 (age 65–66)OriginDublin, IrelandGenresContemporarytraditionalclassicalbluegrasscountryOccupation(s)Musicianmulti-instrumentalistInstrument(s)MandolinfiddlebanjoYears active1980–presentMusical artist Paul Kelly (born 1957) is an Irish multi-instrumentalist and musician from Tallaght in Dublin, Ireland. He ha...
Pasar KlewerGapura Pasar KlewerLokasiKota Surakarta, Jawa TengahAlamatJalan Dr. Radjiman Wedyadiningrat No. 5AKelurahan Gajahan, Kecamatan Pasar KliwonKota Surakarta, Jawa Tengah 57155Tanggal diresmikan9 Juni 1970 Pasar Klewer (Jawa: ꦦꦱꦂꦑ꧀ꦭꦺꦮꦺꦂ, translit. Pasar Klèwèr) adalah pasar tekstil terbesar di Kota Surakarta.[1] Pasar yang letaknya bersebelahan dengan Keraton Surakarta ini juga merupakan pusat perbelanjaan kain batik yang menjadi rujukan para ...
Julio Gutiérrez Julio Gutiérrez tocando un piano.Información personalNombre de nacimiento Julio César Gutiérrez Cainas Nacimiento 12 de enero de 1918 Manzanillo, Oriente, CubaFallecimiento 15 de diciembre de 1990 (72 años) Nueva York, Nueva York, Estados UnidosNacionalidad CubanaInformación profesionalOcupación Director musical, músico, compositor, arreglistaGéneros Big band, mambo, chachachá, descargaInstrumentos Piano, vibráfono, órganoDiscográficas Panart, Sirena, Montil...
هذه المقالة بحاجة لصندوق معلومات. فضلًا ساعد في تحسين هذه المقالة بإضافة صندوق معلومات مخصص إليها. هذه المقالة يتيمة إذ تصل إليها مقالات أخرى قليلة جدًا. فضلًا، ساعد بإضافة وصلة إليها في مقالات متعلقة بها. (مارس 2023) الحبوبية أو سليقة القمح أكلة[؟] حلوة منتشرة في الشام، و...
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Reality legal show/documentary television series This article is about the television show. For other uses, see Case file (disambiguation). For other uses, see Cold Case (disambiguation). This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: Cold Case Files – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2008...
Uatumã Biological ReserveReserva Biológica do UatumãIUCN category Ia (strict nature reserve)Location in BrazilNearest cityManaus, AmazonasCoordinates1°12′S 59°28′W / 1.20°S 59.46°W / -1.20; -59.46Area938,720 hectares (2,319,600 acres)DesignationBiological reserveCreated19 September 2002 Uatumã Biological Reserve Sloth in the reserve Uatumã Biological Reserve (Portuguese: Reserva Biológica do Uatumã) is a Biological reserve around the river Uatumã i...
Former professional Canadian football defensive back Kyle WaltersWinnipeg Blue BombersWalters at Winnipeg's 2019 Grey Cup parade.Born: (1973-07-23) July 23, 1973 (age 50)St. Thomas, Ontario[1]Career informationCFL statusNationalPosition(s)General managerHeight5 ft 11 in (180 cm)Weight175 lb (79 kg)CollegeGuelphCFL Draft1996 / Round: 2 / Pick: 10Drafted byHamilton Tiger-CatsCareer historyAs administrator2013Winnipeg Blue Bombers (Ass. GM)2013–p...
Hotel and restaurant in Manhattan, New York The NoMadGeneral informationTypeHotelAddress1170 BroadwayTown or cityNew YorkCountryUnited StatesOwnerSydell GroupWebsiteOfficial websiteCoordinates40°44′42″N 73°59′19″W / 40.744960°N 73.988568°W / 40.744960; -73.988568Built1902–1903ArchitectSchickel & DitmarsArchitectural style(s)Beaux ArtsRestaurant informationEstablished2012[1]Owner(s)Daniel HummHead chefDaniel HummRating Michelin Guide, 2018[...
1999 American animated sci-fi sitcom This article is about the animated comedy television series. For other uses, see Futurama (disambiguation). FuturamaGenre Adult animation[1] Animated sitcom Science fiction Comedy drama Created byMatt GroeningDeveloped by Matt Groening David X. Cohen Voices of Billy West Katey Sagal John DiMaggio Tress MacNeille Maurice LaMarche Phil LaMarr Lauren Tom David Herman Opening themeTheme from FuturamaComposerChristopher TyngCountry of originUnited State...
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: 1986 Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council election – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) 1986 Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council election ← 1984 8 May 1986 (...
Questa voce sull'argomento stagioni delle società calcistiche italiane è solo un abbozzo. Contribuisci a migliorarla secondo le convenzioni di Wikipedia. Segui i suggerimenti del progetto di riferimento. Voce principale: Solbiatese Arno Calcio. Associazione Sportiva SolbiateseStagione 1965-1966Sport calcio Squadra Solbiatese Allenatore Alberto Molina Presidente Danilo Carabelli Serie C8º posto nel girone A. Maggiori presenzeCampionato: Galli, Taddei (34) Miglior marcatoreCampiona...
Railway station in Adelaide, South Australia This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.Find sources: Woodville railway station, Adelaide – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) WoodvilleGeneral informationLocationWoodville Road, WoodvilleCoordi...
