History of the Environment Movement

  • Human population hits 1 Billion

  • Upper Ten-mile Creek

    Mining for gold, lead, copper and zinc began in the 1870’s and continued through the 1930’s. Waste rock holding heavy metals filled roads, yards, and local waterways as filler material. The rock contaminated soil and groundwater with heavy metals.
  • Human population hits 2 Billion

  • Dust bowel

    It was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian Prairies. The phenomenon was caused by a combination of natural factors and human-made factors.
  • Love Canal

    The Love Canal was an abandoned canal that became a dumping ground for 22,000 tons of chemical waste (including polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxin, and pesticides) produced by the Hooker chemicals and Plastics Corporation in the 1940’s and 50’s.
  • Minamata disaster

    It is a disease that can damage/kill your nervous which caused by methylmercury poising. It was also developed in 1956 in the Japanese fishing methylmercury poisoning.
  • Human population hits 3 Billion

  • Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring Published

    Her book was a landmark in the development of the modern environmental movement. Silent Spring explained how indiscriminate application of agricultural chemicals, pesticides, and other modern chemicals polluted our streams, damaged bird and animal populations, and caused severe medical problems for humans.
  • Clean Air Act

    One of the goals of the act was to set and achieve NAAQS in all states by 1975 to label the public health and welfare risks. The setting of these pollutant standards was combined with directing the states to develop state implementation plans.
  • N.E. US Acid Rain

    Acid rain drained calcium from the soil, which deprived plants of a key nutrient. This led to the decline of important natural resources. The acid rain was caused by sulfur dioxide from burning coal entering the atmosphere and lowering the pH of rainwater.
  • Stockholm Conference

    The Stockholm declaration, placed environmental issues at the forefront of international concerns and initiated a dialogue between industrialized and developing countries on the link between economic growth, the population of the air, water, and oceans and the well-being of people around the world.
  • Endangered Species Act

    The ESA provides a program for the careful maintenance of natural resources. Plus helps threatened, endangered plants and animals, the habitats that they are found in.
  • Human population hits 4 Billion

  • Bhopal disaster

    It was a Gas/chemical accident on December 2-3 ,1984, at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL). It was considered the world’s industrial disaster because over 500,000 people in the small towns were exposed with highly toxic gas.
  • Chernobyl meltdown

    Chernobyl accident was the outcome of a fault reactor design that was operated in a way that was not good enough with trained personnel. The resulting steam explosion and fires set free had at least 5% of the radioactive reactor core into the environment.
  • Human population hits 5 Billion

  • Horizon oil spill

    It was an environmental disaster off the coast of the United States in the Gulf of Mexico on the Macondo Prospect. Also considered to be the largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.
  • Montreal Protocol

    It was international treaty that was created to phase out the production of many substances. It was also agreed on September 16, 1987, and entered into force on January 1, 1989.
  • Great Pacific Garbage Patch

    The paper was based on research by several Alaska-based researchers in 1988 that measured neutronic plastic in the North Pacific Ocean. They found relatively high contractions of marine debris piling up in regions governed by ocean currents.
  • Kyoto protocol

    The Kyoto Protocol enacts the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by carrying out industrialized countries and economies in transition to limit and reduce greenhouse gases emissions in accordance with agreed individual targets.
  • Human population hits 6 Billion

  • Colorado river levels

    Climate change caused the loss of more than 40 trillion liters (10 trillion gallons) of water in the Colorado River Basin. The Colorado River covers about 647,500 square kilometers (250,000 square miles) in seven states across the U.S. West and supplies water to about 40 million people. It also supports agriculture and natural ecosystems.
  • Documentary film An Inconvenient Truth released.

    It was a documentary film about the former United States Vice President Al Gore. The film features a slide show the he destroyed and was presented of 1,000 times.
  • Deepwater

    Largest marine oil spill in history. Caused by an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig – located in the Gulf of Mexico. Economic hopes in the Gulf Coast states were awful.
  • Human population hits 7 Billion

  • Zero Water in the South Africa

    Was in the Western Cape region, most notably affecting the City of Cape Town. The peoples water supply was reduced 500 million liters (130,000,000 US gal) per day.
  • Australian bushfire

    The Bushfire season was marked by severe and protracted drought. There was 33 people that died in the 2019-20 bushfire season. There was large amount of property loss and threats to lives as well as property forced people to evacuate from their homes.
  • Human population hits 8 Billion