The Environment and Natural Resources from 1968 to 1980 in two minutes
- Rachel Carson's Silent Spring in 1962 traced pesticides such as DDT through food chains, and the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill and Cuyahoga River fire in Cleveland made pollution a national concern.
- Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act on January 1, 1970, about 20 million Americans joined the first Earth Day on April 22, and the Environmental Protection Agency began work that December.
- Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972 over Nixon's veto and the Endangered Species Act in 1973; the EPA banned most DDT uses in 1972.
- American oil production peaked in 1970, and in October 1973 Arab producers embargoed the United States during the Yom Kippur War, roughly quadrupling oil prices and causing shortages and long gas lines.
- Washington responded with a 55 mph speed limit in 1974, a Strategic Petroleum Reserve and fuel-economy standards in 1975, the Department of Energy in 1977 and the National Energy Act in 1978.
- Toxic waste at Love Canal in New York led Carter to declare a federal emergency in 1978, and he signed the Superfund cleanup law in 1980.
- On the exam: Questions ask about the causes of environmental laws, grassroots pressure versus federal action, and the energy crisis, with links to the Great Society and conservative opposition to regulation.
Topic 8.13 key terms
- Silent Spring (1962)
Rachel Carson's bestseller on the dangers of pesticides such as DDT. It made pollution a public issue, and many historians call it the start of the modern environmental movement.
- Industry's case
Pesticides made food cheap and fought malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Carson didn't call for banning all of them. She called for care.
- Santa Barbara oil spill (1969)
A well blowout off California that fouled the coast for weeks. Public shock helped push Congress toward the environmental laws of 1969 and 1970.
- Cuyahoga River fire (1969)
Oily debris on Cleveland's river burned in June 1969. It became a national symbol of industrial pollution and fed the push for the Clean Water Act of 1972.
- Environmental movement
Public campaigns from the 1960s on that pressed government to limit pollution and protect wildlife. They led to Earth Day and the EPA in 1970.
- National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA, 1970)
Requires federal agencies to study how a project will affect the environment, in a report called an environmental impact statement, before they build it or pay for it.
- Earth Day (1970)
A nationwide "teach-in" on the environment, modeled on the antiwar teach-ins of the 1960s. About 20 million people took part. Its national coordinator, Denis Hayes, was 25.
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 1970)
The federal agency that sets and enforces national rules on air and water pollution, pesticides, radiation and waste. Created by a presidential reorganization plan, it opened in December 1970.
- Clean Air Act (1970)
Set national air-quality standards and ordered carmakers to cut tailpipe pollution about 90 percent. Automakers said the deadlines were impossible; the EPA and Congress extended them more than once.
- Endangered Species Act (1973)
Protects threatened and endangered species and the habitats they depend on.
- Clean Water Act (1972)
Set limits on what factories and cities could dump into rivers and lakes, and paid for sewage plants.
- OPEC and OAPEC
OPEC, founded in 1960, coordinates oil exporters' policies. Its Arab members' group, OAPEC, declared the 1973 embargo. Iran and Venezuela, in OPEC, did not join that cutoff.
- Embargo
A government ban on trade. In October 1973, Arab oil producers stopped selling oil to the United States, to pressure Israel.
- Project Independence (1973)
Nixon's goal of meeting America's energy needs without foreign sources by 1980. By 1977, imports covered 46.5 percent of the oil Americans used, up from 34.8 percent in 1973.
- 55 mph speed limit (1974)
A national maximum of 55 miles per hour, set in January 1974 to save gasoline. A state that refused lost its federal highway money.
- Strategic Petroleum Reserve (1975)
Oil stored in salt caverns on the Gulf Coast for the next emergency. Congress created the reserve in 1975. The first oil went in later.
- CAFE standards (1975)
Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. Each carmaker's new cars had to average 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985.
- Moral equivalent of war (1977)
Carter's name for his call to save energy. The National Energy Plan he sent Congress two days later put conservation first.
- Department of Energy (1977)
A new cabinet department that combined the Federal Energy Administration, the Energy Research and Development Administration (which ran the nuclear weapons labs) and the Federal Power Commission, plus energy programs from other agencies.
- National Energy Act (1978)
Five laws: a tax on gas-guzzling cars and credits for insulation and solar heat; efficiency rules; limits on burning oil and gas in new power plants; rules that let small producers sell power to utilities; and an end to natural gas price controls. Congress left out Carter's biggest oil tax.
- Love Canal (1978)
A neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York, built around a buried chemical waste dump. The emergency there in 1978 helped lead to the Superfund law in 1980.
- Carter Doctrine (1980)
Carter's January 23, 1980 pledge that the United States would use military force, if it had to, to keep any outside power from controlling the Persian Gulf and its oil.
- Superfund (1980)
A federal fund, paid for largely by taxes on the chemical and oil industries, to clean up toxic waste sites and make polluters pay.
- Sagebrush Rebellion
A campaign, from 1979, by Western states, ranchers and miners to take state control of federal land and to loosen federal environmental rules. It points ahead to Period 9.
- Greenhouse gases
Gases that hold heat in the air, chiefly carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and gas. A 1979 National Academy of Sciences panel estimated that doubling carbon dioxide would warm the Earth near 3°C, give or take 1.5°C.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
The People Had Done It Themselves
1962–1969
Key terms: Silent Spring (1962), Industry's case, Santa Barbara oil spill (1969), Cuyahoga River fire (1969), Environmental movement
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
Key terms: National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA, 1970), Earth Day (1970), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 1970), Clean Air Act (1970), Endangered Species Act (1973), Clean Water Act (1972)
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
Key terms: OPEC and OAPEC, Embargo, Project Independence (1973), 55 mph speed limit (1974), Strategic Petroleum Reserve (1975), CAFE standards (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
Key terms: Moral equivalent of war (1977), Department of Energy (1977), National Energy Act (1978), Love Canal (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
Key terms: Carter Doctrine (1980), Superfund (1980), Sagebrush Rebellion, Greenhouse gases
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.