oil spill in 1969, acid rain in the Midwest, the choking smog over Los Angeles, toxic waste in the rivers, and lead paint or asbestos in their own basements.
In the late 1960s, the green movement took off, especially among younger, well-educated suburban voters. Millions joined the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Audubon Society, among others. Rachel Carson had aroused Americans with her book
Silent Spring
in 1962, but it was the raw, in-your-face ugliness of pollution that fanned the flames of public anger and gave the issue urgency. In the late 1960s, when you stuck an arm into the Potomac River in Washington, it came out covered with green slime. The river wore a filthy floating coat of green algae. That typified the visible, palpable stain of pollution from coast to coast.
“I remember when the Cuyahoga River burned, with flames thatwere eight stories high,” Robert Kennedy, Jr., told me. “I remember the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 that closed virtually all the beaches in Southern California. I remember when they declared Lake Erie dead. I remember that I couldn’t swim in the Hudson, or the Charles, or the Potomac when I was growing up.”
“This Has Got to Stop”
“There was anger at the state of the world, at the state of your own back yard, whether it be a water body or the air or your mountain range,” said William Baker of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “There was anger that we as a country had let it go so far. And there was a grass roots rebellion saying, ‘This has got to stop.’ ”
So intense was the public interest in the environment and so fierce the political pressure from grassroots America that Nixon, who was far from a tree-hugging environmentalist, felt compelled to declare his fealty to environmental protection on New Year’s Day 1970. The coming decade, he declared, “absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment.” Then, echoing a battle cry of the green movement, he trumpeted: “It is literallynow or never.”
Typically, Washington moves deliberately—which means slowly—on reforms. But on the environment, Congress andthe Nixon White House moved with astonishing speed. During his first year, President Nixon set up a White House Council on Environmental Quality, naming environmentalist Russell Train as its chairman. Solid bipartisan majorities in Congress rushed through a flow of environmental legislation under Nixon: the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; a bill establishing the Environmental Protection Agency; the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; the Noise Pollution and Abatement Act; the Coastal Zone Management Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Endangered Species Act; and the Safe Drinking Water Act. More environmental legislation was passed under Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned in 1974.
At the state level, too, there was a rush of action. It seemed as if no politician dared brook the anger of an aroused public. “It was a big issue,” observed William Ruckelshaus, Nixon’s first EPA chief. “It exploded on the country, and it forced a Republican administration and a president [who] had never thought about this very much, President Nixon. It forced him to deal with it because the public said, ‘This is intolerable. We’ve got to do something about it.’ ”
In those early years of environmental enthusiasm, quite a lot was achieved. The results were visible. That early wave of government regulation did, in fact, reduce the most egregious pollution, like the green slime on the Potomac. Big industrial polluters and cities were taken to court and fined, until they changed their ways. The public thought the job was done. Voter interest subsided, and as it subsided, so did government action.
Consumer Power:
In the late 1960s, the green movement took off, especially among younger, well-educated suburban voters. Millions joined the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Defense Council, the League of Conservation Voters, the Environmental Defense Fund, and the National Audubon Society, among others. Rachel Carson had aroused Americans with her book
Silent Spring
in 1962, but it was the raw, in-your-face ugliness of pollution that fanned the flames of public anger and gave the issue urgency. In the late 1960s, when you stuck an arm into the Potomac River in Washington, it came out covered with green slime. The river wore a filthy floating coat of green algae. That typified the visible, palpable stain of pollution from coast to coast.
“I remember when the Cuyahoga River burned, with flames thatwere eight stories high,” Robert Kennedy, Jr., told me. “I remember the Santa Barbara oil spill in 1969 that closed virtually all the beaches in Southern California. I remember when they declared Lake Erie dead. I remember that I couldn’t swim in the Hudson, or the Charles, or the Potomac when I was growing up.”
“This Has Got to Stop”
“There was anger at the state of the world, at the state of your own back yard, whether it be a water body or the air or your mountain range,” said William Baker of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. “There was anger that we as a country had let it go so far. And there was a grass roots rebellion saying, ‘This has got to stop.’ ”
So intense was the public interest in the environment and so fierce the political pressure from grassroots America that Nixon, who was far from a tree-hugging environmentalist, felt compelled to declare his fealty to environmental protection on New Year’s Day 1970. The coming decade, he declared, “absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment.” Then, echoing a battle cry of the green movement, he trumpeted: “It is literallynow or never.”
Typically, Washington moves deliberately—which means slowly—on reforms. But on the environment, Congress andthe Nixon White House moved with astonishing speed. During his first year, President Nixon set up a White House Council on Environmental Quality, naming environmentalist Russell Train as its chairman. Solid bipartisan majorities in Congress rushed through a flow of environmental legislation under Nixon: the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; a bill establishing the Environmental Protection Agency; the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act; the Noise Pollution and Abatement Act; the Coastal Zone Management Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Endangered Species Act; and the Safe Drinking Water Act. More environmental legislation was passed under Gerald Ford after Nixon resigned in 1974.
At the state level, too, there was a rush of action. It seemed as if no politician dared brook the anger of an aroused public. “It was a big issue,” observed William Ruckelshaus, Nixon’s first EPA chief. “It exploded on the country, and it forced a Republican administration and a president [who] had never thought about this very much, President Nixon. It forced him to deal with it because the public said, ‘This is intolerable. We’ve got to do something about it.’ ”
In those early years of environmental enthusiasm, quite a lot was achieved. The results were visible. That early wave of government regulation did, in fact, reduce the most egregious pollution, like the green slime on the Potomac. Big industrial polluters and cities were taken to court and fined, until they changed their ways. The public thought the job was done. Voter interest subsided, and as it subsided, so did government action.
Consumer Power:
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