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Agricultural Revolution
Increase in agriculture production, increase in labor & land productivity, development of crop rotation. -
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Industrial Revolution
New manufacturing, hand production to machinery, new chemical manufacturing & use of coal & steam power. -
John Muir
Born on April 21, 1838, United Kingdom. He was a naturalist, writer, and advocate of U.S. forest conservation, John Muir founded the Sierra Club and helped establish Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks. -
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
The principal theme of Walden by Henry David Thoreau is simplicity. More specifically, Thoreau extolls the joys and satisfactions of a simple life. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act encouraged Western migration by providing settlers with 160 acres of land in exchange for a nominal filing fee. Among its provisions was a five-year requirement of continuous residence before receiving the title to the land and the settlers. -
Yellowstone National Park founded
Founded by President Ulysses S. Grant. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially the Old Faithful geyser, one of its most popular. -
American Forestry Association founded
American Forests is a 501 non-profit conservation organization dedicated to protecting and restoring healthy forest ecosystems. Their stated mission is to "protect and restore forests, helping to preserve the health of our planet for the benefit of its inhabitants". -
Yosemite plus Sequoia National Park founded
Yosemite National Park has the distinction of being the first scenic natural area to be set aside by the United States for public benefit and appreciation of landscape beauty. Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove were the 1864 birthplace of the national park idea, which has spread throughout the world. -
General Revision Act
The law gives the President of the United States the authority to unilaterally set aside forest reserves from land in the public domain. -
Sierra Club founded
The Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by a group of Californians who wished to sponsor wilderness outings in “the mountain regions of the Pacific Coast.” The naturalist John Muir was its first president (1892–1914) and very soon involved the club in political action to further nature conservation. -
Lacey Act
The Lacey Act is a 1900 United States law that bans trafficking in illegal wildlife. -
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Golden Age of Conservation
Theodore Roosevelt made it a personal goal of his to protect as much nature and wildlife as possible. He worked for new conservation laws, and publicly spoke about the importance of nature to American citizens. -
First national wildlife refuge established
(Pelican Island) National wildlife refuges are places where a majority of our nation's animals find the habitat they need to survive. This makes the Refuge System the single most important system of lands set aside to protect our nation's rich wild heritage. -
Audubon Society founded
The National Audubon Society is dedicated to protecting diversity in bird species. Their programs include habitat protection, green energy development, and the management of protected areas. -
U.S. Forest Service founded
The Forest Service provides the scientific and technical knowledge necessary to protect and sustain the Nation's natural resources on all lands, providing benefits to people within the capabilities of the land. -
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot was an important figure in the American conservation movement. As the first chief of the US Forest Service, Pinchot tripled the nation's forest reserves, protecting their long-term health for both conservation and recreational use. -
Aldo Leopold
Leopold was influential in the development of modern environmental ethics and in the movement for wilderness conservation. His ethics of nature and wildlife preservation had a profound impact on the environmental movement, with his ecocentric or holistic ethics regarding land. -
Antiquities Act
The Antiquities Act gives the president the ability to “declare by public proclamation historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest that are situated on land owned or controlled by the Federal Government to be national monuments.” -
Congress became upset with Roosevelt
Congress became upset because Roosevelt was waving so much forest land, so they banned further withdrawals. -
FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Control Act
The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) provide for federal regulation of pesticide distribution, sale, and use. All pesticides distributed or sold in the United States must be registered (licensed) by EPA. -
U.S. National Park service founded
President Woodrow Wilson established the National Park Service in 1916 to consolidate management of America's federal parklands under one agency. -
Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl intensified the crushing economic impacts of the Great Depression and drove many farming families on a desperate migration in search of work and better living conditions. -
Civilian Conservation Corps founded
As part of the New Deal Program, to help lift the United States out of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps in 1933. As jobs and income were incredibly scarce, the CCC for a lot of these young men was their first job. -
Soil Conservation Service founded
The ambitious act established the Soil Conservation Service to combat soil erosion and “to preserve natural resources, control floods, prevent impairment of reservoirs, and maintain the navigability of rivers and harbors, protect public health, public lands and relieve unemployment.” -
Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act
In response, Congress passed The Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act of 1934 to provide “funds for the acquisition of areas for use as migratory-bird sanctuaries, refuges, and breeding grounds...for the protection of certain migratory birds.” -
Taylor Grazing Act
The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 was passed to halt overgrazing. It converted federal rangelands from a commons to a permit-based grazing system. -
Fish plus Wildlife Service founded
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's mission is, working with others, to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. -
Silent Spring published by Rachel Carson
It spurred a reversal in the United States' national pesticide policy, led to a nationwide ban on DDT for agricultural uses, and helped to inspire an environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. -
Clean Air Act
The Clean Air Act (CAA) is a comprehensive federal law that regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources. -
Wilderness Act
The Wilderness Act of 1964 established the National Wilderness Preservation System, a national network of more than 800 federally designated wilderness areas. These wilderness areas are managed by the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and US Forest Service. -
Wild and Scenic Rivers Act
The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act safeguards the special character of these rivers, while also recognizing the potential for their appropriate use and development. -
Cuyahoga River in Clevelend, Ohio, caught fire
On June 22, 1969, an oil slick caught fire on the Cuyahoga River just southeast of downtown Cleveland, Ohio. The image that "the river caught fire" motivated change to protect the environment. -
NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act)
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is a United States environmental law that promotes the enhancement of the environment and established the President's Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). -
First Earth Day
The first Earth Day indeed increased environmental awareness in America. -
Environmental Protection Agency established
In 1970, in response to the welter of confusing, often ineffective environmental protection laws enacted by states and communities, President Richard Nixon created the EPA to fix national guidelines and to monitor and enforce them. -
OPEC oil embargo
During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations. -
Endangered Species Act
Through federal action and by encouraging the establishment of state programs, the 1973 Endangered Species Act provided for the conservation of ecosystems upon which threatened and endangered species of fish, wildlife, and plants depend. -
Roland and Molina (UCI) announce that CFCs are depleting the ozone layer
It suggested that long-lived organic halogen compounds, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), could reach the stratosphere where they would be dissociated by UV light, releasing chlorine atoms. -
RCRA (Resource Conservation and Recovery Act)
The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) gives EPA the authority to control hazardous waste from cradle to grave. This includes the generation, transportation, treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous waste. RCRA also set forth a framework for the management of non-hazardous solid wastes. -
Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) prohibits surface coal mining within the boundaries of any unit of the National Park System. -
Love Canal, NY (toxic waste leaks into residential houses)
In 1978, Love Canal, located near Niagara Falls in upstate New York, was a nice little working-class enclave with hundreds of houses and a school. -
3 Mile Island Nuclear accident
The accident at Three Mile Island 2 (TMI 2) in 1979 was caused by a combination of equipment failure and the inability of plant operators to understand the reactor's condition at certain times during the event. -
Alaskan Lands Act
The Act provided comprehensive management guidance for all public lands in Alaska, including provisions regarding wilderness, subsistence, transportation and utility corridors, oil and gas leasing, mining, public access, hunting, trapping and fishing, and implementation of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. -
CERCLA (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act a.k.a Super-Fund)
It provides a Federal "Superfund" to clean up uncontrolled or abandoned hazardous-waste sites as well as accidents, spills, and other emergency releases of pollutants and contaminants into the environment ... -
Bhopal, Indian (chemical toxic cloud kills 2,000)
An explosion at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, on December 3, 1984, leads to the worst industrial accident in history. At least 2,000 people died and another 200,000 were injured when toxic gas enveloped the city. -
Chernobyl
The 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, then part of the former Soviet Union, is the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power to cause fatalities from radiation. It was the product of a severely flawed Soviet-era reactor design, combined with human error. -
Montreal Protocol
It was designed to stop the production and import of ozone depleting substances and reduce their concentration in the atmosphere to help protect the earth's ozone layer. -
Exxon Valdez
The Exxon Valdez oil spill was a manmade disaster that occurred when Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker owned by the Exxon Shipping Company, spilled 11 million gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989. It was the worst oil spill in U.S. history until the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. -
Energy Policy Act of 1992
The Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 1992 aims to reduce U.S. dependence on petroleum and improve air quality by addressing all aspects of energy supply and demand, including alternative fuels, renewable energy, and energy efficiency. -
Desert Protection Act
The stated aim of the legislation was "to provide for conservation, enhanced recreation opportunities, and development of renewable energy in the California Desert Conservation Area. -
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Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol sets binding emission reduction targets for 37 industrialized countries and economies in transition and the European Union. -
World population hits 6 billion
The United Nations Population Fund designated 12 October 1999 as the approximate day on which the world population reached six billion. It was officially designated "The Day of Six Billion".