People
in 1974, determined that CFCs destroy stratospheric (good) ozone.
Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina
won the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize for “Green Belt” movement—planting trees in Kenya that provided food and fuel, and improved conditions against soil erosion and desertification.
Wangari Maathai
on December 2, 1984, poisonous methyl isocyanate gas was released accidentally by a Union Carbide pesticide plant killing about 5,000 people and causing serious health effects for 50,000–60,000.
Bhopal, India:
hazardous chemicals buried in an old canal leaked into homes and school yards. Led to the passage of the Comprehensive Environment Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), also known as the Superfund Act.
Love Canal Housing Development, Niagara Falls, New York
Power plant had a wall breached in a retention pond holding sludge from the coal burning power plant. This released up to 1 billion gallons of mercury- and arsenic-containing sludge into the nearby River watershed.
Clinch River, Tennessee
a biologist who published The Population Bomb in 1968; discussed overpopulation and food production issues for future generations.
a British economist who said, “human population cannot continue to increase. Consequences will be war, famine & pestilence (disease).”
Paul Ehrlich
Thomas Malthus
published “The Tragedy of the Commons” in the journal Science in 1968; argued that rational people will exploit shared resources (commons).
Garrett Hardin
a large inland sea that is drying up; its salinity is rising as a result of water diversion for irrigating crops.
Aral Sea, Uzbekistan/Kazakhstan (former Soviet Union) and Mono Lake, California
the silt that made the Nile region fertile fills the reservoir. Lack of irrigation controls causes waterlogging and salinization. The parasitic disease schistosomiasis thrives in the stagnant water of the reservoir.
Aswan High Dam, Egypt
the world’s largest dam on Yangtze River submerged ecosystems, cities, archeological sites, displaced two million people, and fragmented the river habitat.
Three Gorges Dam, China
founded Sierra Club in 1892; fought unsuccessfully to prevent the damming of the Hetch Hetchy Valley in Yosemite National Park.
John Muir
wrote A Sand County Almanac, published a year after his death in 1948; promoted a “Land Ethic” in which humans are ethically responsible for serving as the protectors of nature.
Aldo Leopold
on April 26, 1986, an unauthorized safety test led to a fire and explosion at a nuclear power plant—as a result, millions of people in Europe are exposed to unsafe levels of radiation.
Chernobyl, Ukraine:
on March 29, 1979, the emergency cooling system of a nuclear reactor was shut down erroneously by an operator. This led to a partial core meltdown. The containment structure worked well to retain all radioactive materials, but eventually some radioactive gas was purposely released to reduce pressure in the containment structure and avoid a more serious accident.
Three-Mile Island, Pennsylvania
the proposed site for permanent storage of high-level nuclear waste, 70 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Critics are concerned about the safety of transporting high-level radioactive waste to the site and the proximity of the site to a volcano and earthquake faults.
Yucca Mountain, Nevada
first chief of the United States Forest Service; advocated managing resources for multiple use using principles of sustainable yield.
Gifford Pinchot
president of the United States from 1901 to 1909, well-known for his conservation efforts. He established the first National Wildlife Refuge at Pelican Island.
President who established the EPA in 1970
Theodore Roosevelt
Richard Nixon
on March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez hit a reef in Prince William Sound spilling 260,000 barrels of oil. It was the largest oil spill ever in U.S. waters.
Valdez, Alaska
the world’s largest aquifer; under parts of Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. It holds enough water to cover the United States with 1.5 feet of water. It is being depleted for agricultural and urban use.
Ogallala Aquifer
2011 tsunami disabled the emergency generators that would have provided power to control and operate the pumps necessary to cool nuclear reactors.
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
biologist who co-coined, with Robert MacArthur, the theory of island biogeography, which identifies factors that regulate species richness on islands.
E.O. Wilson
published Silent Spring in 1962; documented the environmental damage done by DDT and other pesticides. This book heightened public awareness at the start of the modern environmental movement.
Rachel Carson
mental impairments, birth defects, and deaths caused by mercury dumped in Minamata Bay by a factory. The mercury was converted to methylmercury, bioaccumulated in fish, and biomagnified through food chains. Mercury entered humans who ate a traditional fish-based diet.
Minamata, Japan:
the largest estuary in the United States; lies off the Atlantic Ocean between Maryland and Virginia, and was declared a dead zone in the 1970s due to hypoxic conditions created from nutrient loading by fertilizers, which caused cultural eutrophication.
Chesapeake Bay, Maryland/Virginia
On 20 April 2010, while drilling at the Macondo Prospect, an uncontrollable blowout caused an explosion on the rig that killed 11 crewmen and ignited a fireball visible from 40 miles (64 km) away. The fire was inextinguishable and, two days later, on 22 April, the rig sank, leaving the well gushing at the seabed and causing the largest oil spill in U.S. waters.