116 The Environmental Debate
consequences as the natural world reacted to the
imbalance. Economic considerations alone were no
longer sufficient justification for upsetting the bal-
ance [see Document 103].
The country’s land development policies, to which
there had been vocal opposition since the 1870s [see
Document 53], were increasingly attacked as a major
cause of ecosystem destabilization. In the mid-1960s,
as suburbs, shopping malls, and multilane highways
spread across the country, concern mounted that too
much open space was being paved over and that much
of the construction was being done without any
consideration for its impact on the environment. By
1965 California had passed a farmland conservation
bill [see Document 104], and by 1970 the environ-
ment impact statement [see Documents 110 and 111]
had become part of the approval process for all new
projects involving the federal government that might
affect environmental quality.The Beginning of Global
Environmental Concern
In the 1960s and 1970s, demographers and econ-
omists were again debating the old Malthusian argu-
ments concerning the rate of population growth and
the ability of the earth to feed increasing numbers of
people [see Documents 107 and 108]. However, these
new discussions focused on the global nature of the
problem and on how world population growth could
undermine the social, economic, and political stabil-
ity of the United States, as well as of other countries.
Furthermore, it was also becoming obvious that peo-
ple in Third World countries wanted to emulate the
lifestyle depicted in American movies and television
programs—a lifestyle based on high energy use and
high material consumption.
The calling of the United Nations Conference on
the Human Environment and the organization of the
United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) in
1972 marked the beginning of a truly global approach
to complex environmental issues [see Document 119].The Search for New Solutions
The inflation and unemployment that affected
the country in the mid-1970s was sparked in part by
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries’
(OPEC) oil embargo in 1973. The war in Vietnam
had come to an end and so had the era of protest.species [see Document 120], and human health, and
to control the effects of agricultural chemicals and
radioactive and other toxic wastes. In 1972 Oregon
passed the first state bottle recycling law, marking
the beginning of a nationwide effort to deal with
the accumulating mounds of trash resulting
from the mass distribution of packaged consumer
goods and foods (including bottled soda, canned
foods and drinks, and boxed cereals, whose avail-
ability had multiplied exponentially since the begin-
ning of the century) and from the superabundance
of printed matter (including newspapers, maga-
zines, and tons of advertising matter).
Meanwhile, new environmental groups were
forming and old conservation organizations, such
as the Sierra Club, were refocusing and gaining new
strength. Two of the most effective new organiza-
tions—the Natural Resources Defense Council and the
Environmental Defense Fund [see Document 114]—
took shape to support the causes of environmentalists
in the courts. Both were outgrowths of local environ-
mental groups with a much narrower mandate.
The post-Carson generation of writers sought to
do more than just promote the enactment of more
effective environmental legislation. They wanted to
change human attitudes as well as human behavior.
In 1972 Justice William O. Douglas [see Document
118B] attempted to institutionalize Christopher
Stone’s advocacy of the rights of nature [see Docu-
ment 117]. Stone’s view of the relationship between
humans and nature was a rethinking of a concept
that had been stated over the centuries in various
ways by such diverse writers as St. Francis, Thoreau,
Muir, and Osborn [see Documents 44, 47, and 87],
and by Native Americans [see Document 80], but in
the Western world this had clearly been a minority
viewpoint. However, in the 1970s, for the first time,
large numbers of people began to question the idea
that humans had a right or even the ability to domi-
nate nature. The time had come to reexamine some
of the country’s core religious and philosophical val-
ues [see Document 106].
People also began to be worried about the desta-
bilization of ecosystems that had attained a balance
over the course of thousands of years [see Docu-
ments 98, 109, and 115]. Increasingly, they recognized
that whenever someone or something upset this bal-
ance, there would be unforeseen and unpredictable