The Heyday of the Environmental Movement, 1960–1979 135
The threat of oil pollution from ships—both
at sea and in our harbors—represents a growing
danger to our marine environment. With the
expansion of world trade over the past three
decades, seaborne oil transport has multiplied
tenfold and presently constitutes more than 60
percent of the world’s ocean commerce.
This increase in shipping has increased the oil
pollution hazard. Within the past ten years, there have
been over 550 tanker collisions, four-fifths of which
have involved ships entering or leaving ports. The rou-
tine discharge by tankers and other ships of oil and
oily wastes as a part of their regular operation is also
a major contributor to the oil pollution problem.... The growing threat from oil spills can be
contained—not by stopping industrial progress—
but through a careful combination of interna-
tional cooperation and national initiatives.
Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States:
Richard Nixon, 1970 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Office, 1971), pp. 12-13, 443.
This requires comprehensive new regula-
tions. It also requires that, to the extent possible,
the price of goods should be made to include the
costs of producing and disposing of them with-
out damage to the environment.
Now, I realize that the argument is often
made that there is a fundamental contradic-
tion between economic growth and the quality
of life, so that to have one we must forsake the
other.
The answer is not to abandon growth, but to
redirect it. For example, we should turn toward
ending congestion and eliminating smog the
same reservoir of inventive genius that created
them in the first place.
B. From a Special Message to
Congress on Marine Pollution from
Oil Spills, May 20, 1970
The oil that fuels our industrial civilization
can also foul our natural environment.
DOCUMENT 113: Clean Air Act Amendments (1970)
The Clean Air Act of 1963, building on the Clean Air Act of 1955 [see Document 93], authorized the Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare to establish clean air criteria, but it left enforcement of these regulations to
the states. A 1967 law required the states to develop implementation plans for the air quality goals they set.
In 1970 Congress took the next, very large step. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 provided for
the establishment of national air quality standards and required the states to develop implementation plans
and set deadlines for meeting these standards. The law allowed the federal government to regulate, through
the Environmental Protection Agency, emissions from automobiles and the composition of automobile fuels
and additives. The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970, together with the Clean Air Act Amendments passed
in 1990, had enormous implications for industry, especially the automobile industry, and have had and will
continue to have a huge effect on both the health and the economy of Americans.
The first corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards were set in 1975, and since then there have been
constant efforts to avoid, and even lower, these targets. Early in the twenty-first century several states brought
a suit against the EPA for its failure to regulate greenhouse gases [see Document164].standard and a national secondary ambi-
ent air quality standard for each air pol-
lutant for which air quality criteria have
been issued prior to such date of enact-
ment; and
(B) after a reasonable time for interested per-
sons to submit written comments thereonNational Ambient Air Quality Standards
Sec. 109. (a) (1) The Administrator [the Environ-
mental ProtectionAgency]—
(A) within 30 days after the enactment of the
Clean Air Amendments of 1970, shall
publish proposed regulations prescribing
a national primary ambient air quality