History of Environmental Movement

By zachwestover

  • Population at 1 Billion

  • Population at 2 Billion

  • Manhattan Project

    The Manhattan Project produced the first atomic bomb. Several lines of research were pursued simultaneously. Both electromagnetic and fusion methods of separating the fissionable uranium-235 from uranium-238 were explored at Oak Ridge in Tennessee.

  • Founding of IUCN

    Established in 1948, the IUCN has significantly impacted conservation by providing a platform for global cooperation among governments, NGOs, and experts, leading to the development of vital conservation strategies, policies, and initiatives. Its Red List of Threatened Species, introduced in 1964, remains a pivotal tool in assessing the conservation status of species and ecosystems.

  • Minamata

    In the late 1950s Minamata Bay, Japan became contaminated with mercury from a nearby factory manufacturing the chemical acetaldehyde. Over two thousand people died, and thousands more experienced crippling injuries. The historical influence of Minamata lies in its role as an event that highlighted the catastrophic consequences of industrial pollution on human health and the environment.

  • Population at 3 Billion

  • Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring Published

    In 1962, American biologist Rachel Carson’s influential book Silent Spring was published. It remains one of the most influential books of the environmental movement. The case against chemical pollution was strongly made as Carson documented the harmful effects of pesticides along food chains to top predators. The book led to widespread concerns about the use of pesticides and the pollution of the environment.

  • Founding of Earth Day

    Earth Day was founded in 1970 by a US Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, after he had seen the effects of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, in 1969. By creating a day that celebrated the Earth, he saw a way of moving environmental protection more centrally onto the national political agenda.

  • Peru's Amazon Degradation

    At the same time, the Amazon has just been listed by WWF as a top deforestation front—one of the 11 regions expected to have more deforestation and forest degradation than anywhere else by 2030. In the Peruvian Amazon, the main culprits of deforestation are small-scale agriculture, commercial mining and related road construction; forest degradation is cause primarily by illegal logging.

  • The Club of Rome

    In 1972, the Club of Rome – a global think tank of academics, civil servants, diplomats, and industrialists that first met in Rome – published The Limits to Growth. This report examined the consequences of a rapidly growing world population on finite natural resources. It has sold 30 million copies in more than 30 translations and has become the best-selling environmental book in history.

  • Stockholm Conference

    In 1972, the United Nations held its first major conference on international environmental issues in Stockholm. It examined how human activity was affecting the global environment. Countries needed to think about how they could improve the living standards of their people without adding to pollution, habitat destruction and species extinction.

  • Population at 4 Billion

  • James Lovelock's book Gaia

    James Lovelock’s book Gaia (1979) proposed the hypothesis that the Earth is a living organism, with self-regulatory mechanisms that maintain climatic and biological conditions. He saw the actions of humanity upsetting this balance with potentially catastrophic outcomes. Subsequent books, up to the present day, have developed these ideas.

  • Bhopal Disaster

    At midnight on 3 December 1984, the Union Carbide pesticide plant in the Indian city of Bhopal released 42 tonnes of toxic methyl isocyanate gas. It has been estimated that between 8000 and 10 000 people died within the first 72 hours following the exposure, and that up to 25 000 have died since from gas-related disease.

  • Chernobyl

    On 26 April 1986, early in the morning, reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant in the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union) exploded. he incident raised issues concerning the safety of Soviet nuclear power stations in particular, but also the general safety of nuclear power. These worries remain to this day.

  • Whaling (Save the Whale)

    The effects of nearly a century of commercial whaling have had long-lasting effects. Luckily, a 1986 ban made commercial whaling illegal worldwide. But there is still work to be done to save the whales.

  • Population at 5 Billion

  • Our Common Future

    In 1987, a report by the UN World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) was published, intended as a follow-up to the Stockholm Conference. The report was called Our Common Future; it took the ideas from Stockholm and developed them further. It linked environmental concerns to development and sought to promote sustainable development through international collaboration. It also placed environmental issues firmly on the political agenda.

  • Kyoto Protocol

    In short, the Kyoto Protocol operationalizes the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by committing industrialized countries and economies in transition to limit and reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions in accordance with agreed individual targets.

  • Population at 6 Billion

  • Ivory Coast’s Toxic Waste Dumping

    Dutch oil trader Trafigura transports four hundred tons of toxic waste consisting of caustic soda and petroleum residue from Amsterdam to Abidjan, dumping it into the Ivorian city’s waste system.

  • Documentary Film: An Inconvenient Truth

    In 2006, the film An Inconvenient Truth examined the
    issues surrounding climate change, and increased awareness of environmental concerns. The publicity surrounding the film meant that more people than ever before heard about global warming, and its message was spread widely and rapidly through modern media, such as the internet.

  • UN Conference on Sustainable Development

    In 2012, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UN CSD, or Rio+20) took place to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit. The meeting had three main objectives:
    – to secure political commitment from nations to sustainable development
    – to assess progress towards internationally agreed commitments (e.g. CO2 reductions) – to examine new and emerging challenges.

  • Population at 7 Billion

  • Durban Conference

    In 2011, the Durban conference lead the debate about a legally binding global agreement was reopened: countries were given until 2015 to decide how far and how fast to cut their carbon emissions. Before the Durban conference, most countries were going to follow national targets for carbon emissions after 2012, which would be voluntary and not legally binding.

  • Population at 8 Billion