Transcript
The People Had Done It Themselves
1962–1969
The alarm had gone off six years earlier, in a book.
Rachel Carson was a former government biologist who wrote bestsellers about the sea.
In Silent Spring, she traced pesticides like DDT from farm fields into rivers, birds and people.
Rachel Carson The most alarming of all man's assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and even lethal materials.
In January 1969, an oil well blew out under a drilling platform off Santa Barbara, California.
More than three million gallons of crude oil fouled about 35 miles of coast. More than 3,500 seabirds died.
Newspapers reported Union Oil's president saying he was amazed at the publicity for “the loss of a few birds.” He wrote that the hearing transcript says something else.
That June, the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland.
Oily junk under two railroad bridges went up, probably from a passing train's sparks. It was out in under half an hour.
The famous photo of the burning river ran in TIME that August. It showed a fire from 1952. No photograph of the 1969 fire is known.
The river had burned more than ten times before. This time, the country noticed.
Why this time? Because people had started to look.
An accident. Now watch what comes next.
Now or Never
1970–1973
New Year's Day, 1970. Richard Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act. He called it his first official act of the decade.
Richard Nixon It is literally now or never.
In February, San Jose State students bought a brand-new Ford and held its funeral. They pushed it to the grave.
On April 22, an estimated 20 million Americans turned out for the first Earth Day.
Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat, borrowed the idea from antiwar teach-ins. A Republican congressman co-chaired it.
That December, Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce the new rules.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 ordered a 90 percent cut in car exhaust.
Accident. Outcry. Law.
DDT thinned the shells of eagles' eggs, and the eggs broke in the nest.
In 1972, the EPA banned most uses of DDT.
Rachel Carson didn't live to see it. She died of cancer in 1964.
In 1963, fewer than 500 pairs of bald eagles nested in the lower 48 states. By 2019, there were about 71,000.
Richard Nixon Nothing is more priceless and more worthy of preservation than the rich array of animal life with which our country has been blessed.
Nixon wasn't always on board. He vetoed the Clean Water Act of 1972 over its cost:
Richard Nixon …its unconscionable $24 billion price tag.
Congress overrode him within a day.
Then the next shock came from the other side of the world.
Sorry, No Gas
1973–1975
American oil wells peaked in 1970. By 1973, a third of America's oil came from abroad.
On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur.
The Soviets armed the Arab side. Nixon rushed weapons to Israel. Thousands of soldiers died in under three weeks.
America's reasons there were ideological, military and economic: an ally, a Cold War rival, and oil.
Arab oil producers cut off the United States, to push Israel out of land it took in 1967.
A barrel of oil went from about $3 to $11.65.
Nixon reached for the Moon.
Richard Nixon Let us set as our national goal, in the spirit of Apollo, with the determination of the Manhattan Project, that by the end of this decade we will have developed the potential to meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy sources.
Gas lines wrapped around the block. Oregon rationed by odd and even plates.
A red flag meant no gas at all.
That Christmas, the national tree had one electric light.
Richard Nixon This year we will drive a little slower. This year the thermostats will be a little lower.
In January 1974, Congress set a national speed limit: 55.
Congress also cleared an 800-mile pipeline that environmental lawsuits had stalled.
Vice President Agnew broke a 49 to 49 Senate tie.
Washington built the Federal Energy Administration, an oil stockpile, and mileage rules.
Same pattern. Except this was no accident.
The Moral Equivalent of War
1977–1978
Two weeks in, Jimmy Carter went on TV in a cardigan, by a fire.
Jimmy Carter Simply by keeping our thermostats, for instance, at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night we could save half the current shortage of natural gas.
Jimmy Carter This difficult effort will be the “moral equivalent of war,” except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.
Critics took the initials and called it MEOW.
In 1977, Congress created a Department of Energy.
Carter's energy plan took a year and a half to pass. One House vote went 207 to 206.
Then came Niagara Falls, New York.
From 1942 to 1953, Hooker Chemical dumped about 21,800 tons of chemical waste into an old canal here.
It sold the land to the school board for a dollar, with a warning in the deed. A school went up anyway.
Lois Gibbs, whose son went to that school, organized her neighbors. State officials, she testified, called her health survey “useless housewife data.”
Loretta Gambino I live in the Love Canal area. We have been victims of greed in today's society without the least concern for human lives.
Loretta Gambino Human lives should not be used for the sake of progress.
In August 1978, Carter declared the first federal emergency ever for a disaster people had made. 239 families moved out.
Accident. Outcry. And the law? It took two more years.
A Road Not Taken
1979–1980
In 1979, a revolution in Iran cut its oil exports. Gas lines came back, and the price of imported oil more than doubled.
Jimmy Carter In the year 2000, the solar water heater behind me, which is being dedicated today, will still be here supplying cheap, efficient energy.
The panels came down in 1986. One is in the Smithsonian now: a museum piece, as Carter put it.
In 1980, Carter vowed to defend the Persian Gulf by force if necessary. Oil was why.
Weeks after losing the election, Carter signed the Superfund law to clean up poisoned places like Love Canal.
Out West, ranchers and miners rebelled against federal land rules. Ronald Reagan cheered them on.
Read the ledger down. The accidents came closer to home, and the laws kept coming, until 1980.
What finally made Washington act? Damage people could see, and people who made sure Washington saw it too.
Frank Borman And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas and God bless all of you – all of you on the good Earth.