MODERN PERIOD

• Major inspiration from Silent Spring

• Emphasis on the inadvertent, non-obvious problems of the food web

• Displacement1 Temporal displacement2 Spatial displacement

• “History of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings”

• “within the moment of time….has one species - man- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world”

• “the most alarming of all man’s assaults upon the environment is the contamination of air, earth, rivers, and sea with dangerous and lethal materials

• “Similarily chemicals (add radiation) sprayed on croplands or forests or gardens lie long in the soil, entering into living organisms passing from one to another in a chain of poisoning and death”

• “even if there were enough time to adjust (a miracle) it would be futile for the new chemicals come from our labs in an endless stream, almost five hundred annually find their way into use in the USA alone”

Average levels DDT 1970

‘PUSHES’ ALONG THE WAY

• 1964 Stuart Udall - The Quiet Crisis

• 1966 Canadian Council of Resource Ministers - pollution and air conference

• 1966 Cuyahoga River declared a fire hazard

• 1966 Kenneth Boulding The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth

• 1968 Concept of ZPG

• 1969 Barry Commoner - science and survival• 1969 Pollution Probe started• 1970 Paul Ehrlich Population, Resources,

Environment• 1970 USA - Environmental Protection Agency and

the Clean Air Act• 1970 Canada Water Act and the Ontario EPA• 1970 Greenpeace incorporates, 1971 first activities

DETERENTS

• Old spectre - resource shortages of the 70’s (oil, coffee, sugar)– demand or politically created– question of lifestyle, solutions and environmental

degradation– example of Reagan - gutting of Clean Air Act so as to

allow for emissions from power plants and automobiles

• rationale that the cause of acid rain is not known and needs to be further studied (delay)

JAMES WATT

• Regan appointed Watt to head up the Department of the Interior (resources, parks- 770 million acres)

• “My responsibility is to follow the scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns. I do not know how many future generations we can count on before the Lord returns”– use it now in other words

• Watt was in charge of resource preservation

• He championed the corporate rights of oil companies and other entrepreneurs

• 1982 One million Americans sign a petition against Watt as head of the Department of the Interior

• 1983 Watt resigns

UNCERTAINTY

• Concerns for lifestyle - price tags (cost, jobs, taxes) attached to alternate strategies for resource usage

• Survey in early 80’s in Ontario– 69% believed that Ontario was not facing energy

shortages in the future (lack of support for conservation measures)

– no commitment for conservation when it involved their cars or required spending on their homes

– Ontario residents believed that a cut in consumption would seriously restrict their lifestyles

• In the 80’s the conservation movement hung on– partially fueled by fear (Love Canal as an example)

• Lack of focus changes with increasing concern for personal health and lifestyle– plus larger issues - Ethiopia, Acid Rain, Ozone