Confronting Economic and Social Realities, 1980–1999 153
Using arid lands for home construction, agriculture,
or grazing creates a host of new problems, from the
urgent need for an adequate water supply to unan-
ticipated consequences of destabilizing a fragile
landscape.
The 1980s and 1990s saw a growing movement
to protect farmland and open space, as more and
more people in suburban and rural areas began to
realize that development was eating away at their
cherished way of life, and the places with which they
had a bond. In November 1998, there were more than
two hundred different questions on ballots across the
nation on issues relating to open space and farmland
conservation programs.
A third complex problem is that of waste dis-
posal. The need to dispose of increasing amounts of
household wastes (including tons of packaging); a
wide and growing range of toxic chemicals employed
in industry, agriculture, and the home; and accumulat-
ing radioactive wastes pose problems of where to put
the wastes, how to dispose safely of dangerous wastes,
and how to deal with pollution from the improper dis-
posal of toxic materials [see Documents 124 and 136].
In the 1980s, as localities began to run out of
acceptable locations for dumping trash, attention
turned to the development of recycling programs,
since recycling would certainly help to reduce the space
needed for waste disposal. While some people were
beginning to think about trash as a valuable source of
energy and others were looking at recycling as a useful
tool for conserving natural resources, many questioned
the economics and physical efficiency of recycling.
The not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) objections
to the siting of garbage dumps as well as of unsightly
and polluting industrial development exemplify the
social aspect of environmental issues. Those with
money and power insist on having clean water, clean
air and unpolluted land in their backyards, while the
poor and minorities are the most likely to end up
living in environmentally degraded neighborhoods
[see Document 136].
Powerful industries often require a financial
inducement to encourage them to undertake envi-
ronmentally beneficial action. One novel approach to
dealing with resistance to pollution regulation is a sys-
tem of emissions trading known as “cap-and-trade”
[see Document 139] that was championed by a law-
yer working in the Reagan administration, C. Boyden
Gray. While it proved effective in controlling acid rain,
attempts to extend the mechanism to other types of
pollution were halted by political opposition.Dealing With Innovations’
Unintended Consequences
The introduction of new technologies and prod-
ucts and the alteration of the landscape not infre-
quently has produced unforeseen changes in the
environment. By the late twentieth century numerous
efforts were being made to undo some of the unin-
tended consequences of new products and environ-
mental alterations. In Marin County in northern
California, whole forests of introduced eucalyptus
trees (an invasive species in the California environ-
ment) were cut down and replaced with native oaks.
In south Florida, efforts have been underway since
the early 1980s to undo some of the channelization
of the waters flowing into and out of the Kissimmee
River, Lake Okeechobee, and the Everglades system
that had been instituted over the past century [see
Document 132]. Both large and small dams on riv-
ers that impeded the movement of fish and interfered
with their spawning have been dismantled, and in the
1990s there was even serious talk of undoing such
monumental projects as Glen Canyon Dam on the
Colorado River in northern Arizona. These kinds
of restoration projects, however, may never be able
to return the sites to their original condition. Over
time the presence of foreign species of plants and ani-
mals or of man-made structures may themselves have
affected changes that impact the restoration projects.
While many technological advances and sci-
entific innovations—from great dams to wonder
drugs—have provided immediate benefits to large
numbers of people, we are discovering that some of
these “improvements” have merely shifted the nature
of the environmental problems with which we have
to cope [see Document 148]. The biotechnology rev-
olution offers the possibility of creating ever more
productive food plants and animals and eliminating
genetic diseases, but some of these new organisms
and gene changes involve the manipulation of nature
at the most fundamental level, and this revolution is
sure to be followed by a host of unplanned environ-
mental consequences [see Document 150].
As the marine ecologist Jane Lubchenco noted
in 1997, “during the last few decades humans have