Wind turbines image via shutterstock. Reproduced at Resilience.org with permission.
The environmental movement had a lot to brag about. In a mere ten-year span in the 1960s and early 1970s, a relatively small community of student activists, along with crusading scientists, from Rachel Carson to Barry Commoner, managed to bring widespread attention to the need for greater environmental protection. The legislative successes flowed like kombucha at a farmers market. All the books and protests and far-out happenings actually resulted in real, tangible progress, which citizens in the United States and other parts of the world could chart over time, like marking a child’s height against the wall.
A rapid-fire series of federal acts ushered in an unprecedented level of environmental regulation and protection. First came the Clean Air Act of 1963 (amended in 1970) that regulates air pollution across the country; then the Wilderness Act of 1964 that protects millions of acres of natural places; and then the Solid Waste Disposal Act of 1965. Next came the Endangered Species Preservation Act (1966), the Wild Scenic Rivers Act (1968), the National Environmental Policy Act (1970), which requires environmental impact assessments on all federal development projects, and the hugely important Clean Water Act (1972).
Nixon, a Republican, played midwife to some of this legislation, and also created the Environmental Protection Agency “to protect human health and the environment.” Earth Day was celebrated for the first time in 1970. Recycling became a standard practice in many parts of the US, DDT and other harmful chemical and pesticides were banned, and a regulatory market for sulfur dioxide emissions from coal plants was created, becoming the world’s first cap-and-trade system.
The environmentalists lost a lot of battles, too. But the successes were obvious.
So what has the sustainability movement achieved? Sustainable development has been a buzzword in international politics since the mid-1980s, and a self-defined sustainability movement has been active since at least the early 90s.
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