The Heyday of the Environmental Movement, 1960–1979 115
other countries persisted into the 1970s and beyond
(the last U.S. nuclear test was conducted in 1992), and
the United States and the Soviet Union still have huge
numbers of nuclear weapons. In the twenty-first cen-
tury nuclear tests have been carried out by nations
that did not have nuclear capability in 1963, including
North Korea, India, and Pakistan, and some Ameri-
can hawks are calling for a resumption of testing by
the United States.
Both the Union of Concerned Scientists (organ-
ized in 1969) and Greenpeace (founded in Canada in
1971, with an American branch organized the same
year) were formed to confront the nuclear threat. As
time passed, the two organizations broadened their
focus from advocacy for nuclear weapon stockpile
destruction and the monitoring of nuclear testing to
the control of radioactive and other toxic waste and
to efforts to protect the quality of the environment.
Although the concept of environmentalism had
entered the federal government’s vocabulary toward
the end of the Eisenhower administration [see Doc-
ument 97], it was not until Richard Nixon’s presi-
dency that the federal government committed itself
to environmental action. Nixon devoted a large part
of his first State of the Union Address, in January
1970, to the need for an effective, and costly, envi-
ronmental program [see Document 112A]. The
impact of the environmental wave became evident
in 1970, with Nixon’s signing of the National Envi-
ronmental Policy Act (NEPA) [see Document 111]
and the first Earth Day celebration. Earth Day, April
22, 1970, marked a high point in popular concern
about environment issues and the beginning of a
populist push for government regulation of activi-
ties and products that had a negative effect on the
environment, and it served as a catalyst for a dec-
ade of environmental action on the local, national,
and international levels. NEPA, probably the most
far-reaching piece of federal environmental legis-
lation ever enacted, opened the way for Nixon’s
creation of the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA), which became the backbone of federal envi-
ronmental action. During the next decade, strong
environmental legislation was passed at every level
of government. There were acts to ensure clean air
[see Document 113] and clean water [see Docu-
ment 116], to protect wetlands, scenic areas, wild-
life habitats, forests, marine mammals, endangeredthis tremendous growth spurt was an enormous
demand for energy and the subsequent increase in
oil imports, the consumption of huge quantities of
natural resources, and widespread industrial pol-
lution. By the 1970s, concern about the negative
impacts of this growth had pushed environmental
issues high on the national agenda.
The Environmental Movement
Although for decades writers had expounded
on the problems of dwindling resources and increas-
ing pollution, they had left the general population
unmoved and, in fact, uneducated. Then, in 1962,
Rachel Carson, who had a substantial following
from her works about the sea, produced Silent Spring
[see Document 100] and raised public consciousness
about environmental degradation. The core message
of Carson, Murray Bookchin [see Document 99],
Paul Ehrlich [see Document 107], and other writers
in them 1960s—that there is a connection between
societal progress and environmental degradation,
that human well-being is dependent on the well-
being of the natural world, that the use of modern
technology and chemicals may have serious nega-
tive as well as positive consequences, and that we as
a nation cannot continue to destroy or consume our
natural resources at an ever increasing rate—was not
new. For the past century, knowledgeable Americans
had been discussing these issues. However, by stating
their ideas in unambiguous and frequently alarmist
terms, Carson and other environmentalists were able
to arouse a very receptive public to grassroots activ-
ism. As a legion of authors wrote elaborations on the
silent spring theme, an environmental tsunami slowly
built up into the modern environmental movement.
Whereas the conservation movement at the turn
of the century was initiated by a wealthy intelligent-
sia concerned about the nation’s future well-being,
the new environmental movement was led and sup-
ported by ordinary people together with segments of
the scientific community, who recognized pollution
as a source of immediate danger to their own health
and well-being. In addition to being worried about
the long-term effects of pesticides like DDT, people
were also anxious about the imminent possibility of
nuclear war. Despite the signing of the Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty in 1963 [see Document 102], ocean and
underground nuclear testing by signatory nations and