Cheryl A. Canino
- 1929 –38: The Great Depression and the New Deal to overcome economic depression is linked with conservation and preservation.
- 1933: Robert Marshall’s The People’s Forests-a program to turn over private forests to government promoting access to the outdoors for people of all classes.
- 1933– 45: New Deal Conservationist programs-the Tennessee Valley which built dam projects in the western U.S, Civilian Conservation Corps, which enlisted young men to develop parks and wilderness areas; and Soil Conservation Service, which advocated the creation of soil banks and the prevention of soil erosion.
- 1936: National Wildlife Federation founded to conserve fish, wildlife, and other natural resources and to lobby for legislation to conserve wildlife.
- 1941– 45: World War II-environmentally served as the dividing line between New Deal responses to the environment and the modern environmental movement. Technological advances invented or brought into wide use during the war (atomic bomb/energy, DDT) posed threats to the safety of the environment and humans. Before the war, efficient management of resources dominated environmental thought; after the war, people began to emphasis environmental quality and human and ecological health.
- 1946: Creation of Bureau of Land Management (BLM)
- 1948: Water Pollution Control Act-is the first federal law to deal officially with water pollution, authorized funding for state and local governments to identify and improve polluted waters.
- 1951: Nature Conservancy founded as a citizen’s environmental organization dedicated to purchasing and protecting the habitats of plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on earth.
- 1962: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring is published. The book identified and discussed the environmental impact of pesticides (especially DDT), including their concentration as they move up the food chain and insects’ development of genetic immunity (requiring still stronger pesticides).
- 1964: Wilderness Act where Congress designated certain federal lands as wilderness areas, “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, and where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”
- 1968: Indian Civil Rights Act mandated tribal consent in civil and criminal juridical matters concerning Indian lands.
- 1968: Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb discussed the negative impacts that the population explosion of the late twentieth century would have on food and other resources. It drew on Malthus’s idea that the rich control their population, but the poor multiply.
- 1970: Founding of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in the executive branch of the federal government for the purpose of regulating air and water quality, radiation and pesticide hazards, and solid-waste disposal, amalgamating earlier separate federal programs.
- 1971: Alaskan Native Claims Settlement Act where Alaskan Eskimos, Aleuts, and Indians received federal grants, federal and state mineral revenues, and land in exchange for their agreement to settle long-standing land claims.
- 1980: Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) was designed to preserve Alaskan lands and waters that have “scenic, historic, or wilderness values.” It provided rural Alaskan residents with the right to continue a subsistence way of life.
- 1980: Conference on “Women and Life on Earth: Ecofeminism in the ’80s” in Amherst, Massachusetts, marked the beginning of ecofeminism as a movement in the United States and undertook to explore and act on the cultural connections between women and nature.
- 1982: Environmental Justice Movement began in 1982 a group of African Americans protested the designation of a landfill site in Warren County, North Carolina, for disposal of toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), initiating the environmental justice movement.56
The Environmental Justice Movement (EJ) is a grassroots community-based movement that addresses the disproportionate burden of toxic pollution and lack of environment benefits/amenities borne by low-income communities and communities of color. From a litigation perspective, the movement has mostly relied on traditional environmental laws to address environmental disparities. But beginning in the early 1990s, EJ communities turned to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), as a way to address racial discrimination in the permitting and siting of facilities that release hazardous pollutants and cause environmental health risks. Section 601 of Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin by any entity or program that receives federal funds. EJ communities have utilized Title VI in two major ways: by directly suing recipients of federal funds in federal and state courts under Title VI and by filing Title VI administrative complaints with EPA and other agencies. Courts have set a high evidentiary bar where communities must prove discriminatory intent.57
