The Environmental Movement

By bestgroupever2019

  • Population reaches 1 billion

  • Population reaches 2 billion

  • The founding of the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN)

    The IUCN was founded on October 5, 1948 in Fontainebleau, France. The IUCN worked with governments and civil society organizations to encourage international cooperation to preserve the natural environment, specifically using scientific data to guide conservation. The IUCN initially focused on examining humans’ impact on the environment but has since created international environmental conventions, worked with the UN, and led conservation movements.

  • Paul Ehrlich

    Paul Ehrlich takes notice of the disappearance of butterflies in New Jersey and attributes their absence to the spraying of DDT, which raised concerns regarding its effect on the human population, in September of 1949.

  • Minamata Disaster and Disease

    In the 1950’s, dozens of people and cats in Minamata, Japan started showing strange symptoms such as numbness in their limbs, tremors, blindness, etc. Researchers determined that the disease, named Minamata Disease, was caused by high amounts of mercury in fish, likely due to illegal mercury dumping by a petrochemical company, Chisso Corporation. The company denied liability but eventually bribed many victims and was legally forced to pay over $2 million in damages to people affected.

  • Population reaches 3 billion

  • Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring Published

    A book, based off a true story, about how DDT damages wildlife, birds, bees, agricultural animals, domestic pets, and humans. It spread awareness about the effects of DDT in the environment.

  • National Historic Preservation Act

    The first legislation about endangered species passes, known as the National Historic Preservation Act, an act to preserve archaeological and historic sites. The act also included the creation of the State Historic Preservation Offices.

  • Fire on the Cuyahoga River

    Cleveland, Ohio was a major industrial powerhouse in America, but to enable industry, pollutants were dumped into the Cuyahoga River. As a result of the years of industrial waste being poured into it, on June 22,1969, a fire occurred on the river. It was a large spectacle and was the initial reason for the signing of the National Environmental Policy Act which eventually established the EPA.
  • Period: to

    Gaia Hypothesis

    A theory that was developed by James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s which proposes that all organisms and their inorganic surroundings on Earth are integrated into one complex system that is self-regulating and maintains the conditions for all life on Earth.

  • Earth Day

    The first Earth Day was created by US senator Gaylord Nelson in reaction to the massive oil spills in Santa Barbara, California. 20 million Americans protested for a healthy and sustainable planet after this tragedy.

  • NOAA

    The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was created to monitor and improve the conditions of the oceans. The organization enforces sustainable use of resources of coastal and marine ecosystems.

  • Establishment of the EPA

    Richard Nixon founded the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA) in 1970. The establishment of the EPA put all federal research, enforcement, and monitoring of the environment into one federal agency. Since its inception, the EPA has been working to protect health of humans and the environment.

  • DDT banned

    The harmful pesticide DDT, or dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane, was widely used in the United States agricultural industry to kill insects to both crops and livestock. Concerns over the use of DDT grew in the 1960s as evidence mounted proving DDT’s environmental damages and diminishing pest control benefits. DDT was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1972 due to its harmful effects.

  • Population reaches 4 billion

  • Save the Whale Foundation founded (Whaling)

    Whaling is the killing of whales for the use of their meet and blubber and it was banned in 1986 by the International Whaling Commision (IWC). 14-year-old Marie Sidenstecker founded the Save the Whales non-profit organization in 1977. The Save the Whales organization seeks to protect the ocean marine mammal life from pollution, being killed, and plastic ingestion.

  • Creation of the Department of Energy

    The Department of Energy was founded on October 1, 1977 with the ratification of the Department of Energy Organization Act. The Department inherited many government programs and initiatives that had long existed without a central organizing body, such as design, creation, and testing of nuclear weapons and national sustainable energy plans.

  • Kyoto

    This international agreement was presented by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on December 11, 1977 in Japan and first put into effect elsewhere in 2005. This puts a heightened pressure on developed countries to decrease their industrial emissions.

  • Three-Mile Island Accident

    The nuclear power plant in Middletown, Pennsylvania, melted down and caused 140,000 people to evacuate. It took 10 years to clean up the waste completely. It was the most significant accident in U.S commercial nuclear power plant history.

  • Bhopal

    A city in Madhya Pradesh, India had an accident at the Union Carbide pesticide plant: 30 tons of methyl isocyanate, which is very toxic, was released. It is estimated to have killed 15,000 people. Many children exposed to the toxins at a young age are still facing physical and mental disabilities.

  • Chernobyl Nuclear Disaster

    Reactor 4 exploded at the powerplant in Chernobyl, causing massive amounts of radioactive material to be released into the atmosphere. 4,000 people were exposed to high levels of radiation, and 5,000 people exposed to lower levels of radiation.

  • Population reaches 5 billion

  • Population reaches 6 billion

  • An Inconvenient Truth

    An Inconvenient Truth releases. The documentary is based off of Al Gore's journey to spread to raise awareness and action towards global warming, originally based off a presentation that he gave over 1,000 times since 1989.

  • Population reaches 7 billion

  • Paris Climate Accord

    The UNFCCC’s Paris Climate Accord calls for its members to maintain their greenhouse gas emissions low to keep the global temperature rise to or below 2°C while providing aid to developing countries to do the same according to nationally determined contributions.