The Genius of Earth Day

The Genius of Earth Day PDF Author: Adam Rome
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429943556
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
The first Earth Day is the most famous little-known event in modern American history. Because we still pay ritual homage to the planet every April 22, everyone knows something about Earth Day. Some people may also know that Earth Day 1970 made the environmental movement a major force in American political life. But no one has told the whole story before. The story of the first Earth Day is inspiring: it had a power, a freshness, and a seriousness of purpose that are difficult to imagine today. Earth Day 1970 created an entire green generation. Thousands of Earth Day organizers and participants decided to devote their lives to the environmental cause. Earth Day 1970 helped to build a lasting eco-infrastructure—lobbying organizations, environmental beats at newspapers, environmental-studies programs, ecology sections in bookstores, community ecology centers. In The Genius of Earth Day, the prizewinning historian Adam Rome offers a compelling account of the rise of the environmental movement. Drawing on his experience as a journalist as well as his expertise as a scholar, he explains why the first Earth Day was so powerful, bringing one of the greatest political events of the twentieth century to life.

The Genius of Earth Day

The Genius of Earth Day PDF Author: Adam Rome
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429943556
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 294

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first Earth Day is the most famous little-known event in modern American history. Because we still pay ritual homage to the planet every April 22, everyone knows something about Earth Day. Some people may also know that Earth Day 1970 made the environmental movement a major force in American political life. But no one has told the whole story before. The story of the first Earth Day is inspiring: it had a power, a freshness, and a seriousness of purpose that are difficult to imagine today. Earth Day 1970 created an entire green generation. Thousands of Earth Day organizers and participants decided to devote their lives to the environmental cause. Earth Day 1970 helped to build a lasting eco-infrastructure—lobbying organizations, environmental beats at newspapers, environmental-studies programs, ecology sections in bookstores, community ecology centers. In The Genius of Earth Day, the prizewinning historian Adam Rome offers a compelling account of the rise of the environmental movement. Drawing on his experience as a journalist as well as his expertise as a scholar, he explains why the first Earth Day was so powerful, bringing one of the greatest political events of the twentieth century to life.

Silent Spring

Silent Spring PDF Author: Rachel Carson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618249060
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
The essential, cornerstone book of modern environmentalism is now offered in a handsome 40th anniversary edition which features a new Introduction by activist Terry Tempest Williams and a new Afterword by Carson biographer Linda Lear.

Before and After the First Earth Day 1970

Before and After the First Earth Day 1970 PDF Author: David M. Guion
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 173

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Book Description
When you think of Earth Day, do you know that the first Earth Day (April 22, 1970) did not begin the history of environmentalism? ecology and environmentalism were little known words before 1970? the landmark legislation of the 1970s was not the beginning of environmental law? Sen. Gaylord Nelson, who conceived the idea of Earth Day, was not the first senator to champion environmental legislation? Nelson modeled the idea of Earth Day after anti-Vietnam War teach-ins? he invited a Republican to co-sponsor it? the most publicized event took place took place more than a month before the official first Earth Day? today's most important environmental laws were enacted with Republican Presidents and a Democratic Congress? the Environmental Protection Agency was at first the most popular federal agency? favoring new environmental laws was once politically the safest stance? groups as different as the John Birch Society and Students for a Democratic Society agreed on the need to stop pollution? most of the predictions of environmental catastrophe were wrong? many of the most vocal environmental activists today make the same flawed arguments? Earth Day is now an international event? Thousands of people helped organize Earth Day 1970 events. Multiple thousands spoke at various events. Millions listened. The first Earth Day made environmentalism a mainstream issue. It unified the country like nothing else. The unity couldn't last. Some of the most popular and influential speakers sowed seeds of the collapse of the environmental consensus with overheated rhetoric and bad predictions. But Earth Day continues to inspire and educate people to adopt more eco-friendly lifestyles. Read this comprehensive guide to the history of environmentalism. David M. Guion, author of the respected blog Sustaining Our World, explains the often neglected and forgotten history and prehistory of Earth Day. And examines its successes and failures 50 years later.

Earth Day and the Global Environmental Movement

Earth Day and the Global Environmental Movement PDF Author: Christy Peterson
Publisher: Twenty-First Century Books (Tm)
ISBN: 9781541552814
Category : YOUNG ADULT NONFICTION
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Discover the history and legacy of Earth Day and delve into issues of environmental justice.

Before and After the First Earth Day, 1970

Before and After the First Earth Day, 1970 PDF Author: David Guion
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781511691727
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
When you think of Earth Day, do you know that* the first Earth Day (April 22, 1970) was not the beginning of the environmental movement? * the landmark legislation of the 1970s was not the beginning of environmental law?* today's most important environmental laws were enacted with a Republican President and Democrats Congress?* the Environmental Protection Agency was at first the most popular agency in the federal government?* favoring new environmental laws was politically the safest stance?* groups as different as the John Birch Society and Students for a Democratic Society agreed on the need to stop pollution?* that the idea of Earth Day was modeled after anti-Vietnam War teach-ins?* that most of the academics' predictions of environmental catastrophe were wrong?* that the most vocal environmental activists today are still wrong because they make the same flawed arguments?Before the first Earth DayEarth Day 1970 marks a turning point in history of environmentalism. Scientists began to express concern about atomic testing and massive spraying of pesticides in the 1950s. The public feared the environmental effects of pollution and the safety of food like never before. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962) made scientific knowledge known to the public and galvanized that fear into calls for action. Conservationists once concerned only about wilderness and wildlife preservation became concerned about such a wider range of issues that they started calling themselves environmentalists instead. First Earth Day, 1970Senator Gaylord Nelson conceived of a national teach-in to put the energy of the antiwar movement to work on environmental issues. He succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Academics, politicians, business leaders, labor leaders, students, housewives, and school children all spoke about the environment at teach-ins all over the country. Earth Day became an annual event.Unfortunately students and academics speaking outside their professional competence made wildly bad predictions about the looming environmental catastrophe * Some named overpopulation as the most important problem. They feared it was already impossible to prevent widespread starvation in India and elsewhere. Meanwhile, Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for preventing widespread starvation in India and elsewhere.* Some claimed modern technology caused of pollution and was powerless to fix what it had damaged.* Some noted that the world climate had been cooling since the 1940s and warned of a coming ice age caused by burning fossil fuels. * Some blamed our Judeo-Christian heritage for standing in the way of progress and advocated sweeping changes to the fabric of society even if they required government coercion.The environment todayDo these claims sound familiar? Environmental activists still loudly and insistently make them today. Global warming has replaced the coming ice age as the issue of choice. It is more nearly correct, but advocates propose needlessly coercive legal remedies and belittle anyone who thinks differently about the issue. That would be most of the public. The public has stopped listening to environmentalists and lost interest in environmental issues and patience with environmentalism, especially climate change rhetoric. Meanwhile, work remains real environmental problems of waste and pollution from 1970. New environmental issues have arisen, which go as far beyond environmentalism as environmentalism went beyond conservationism. A new term, sustainability, better expresses the breadth of these concerns. How can we achieve sustainability in today's polarized political climate? For starters, we can follow sustainability leaders outside of government and environmental action groups who are providing tools to live sustainable lives. I experienced the first Earth Day, and have conducted thorough research. If you care about environmental history, scroll up and click the buy button now.

The Story Of The First Earth Day 1970

The Story Of The First Earth Day 1970 PDF Author: Paul Pete McCloskey
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780578657721
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
The story of the grassroots movement in 1970 to start the first Earth Day and the effect on the environment by bi-partisan cooperation in the Congress and Senate.

Before Earth Day

Before Earth Day PDF Author: Karl Boyd Brooks
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700618937
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Most Americans--even environmentalists--date the emergence of laws protecting nature to the early 1970s. But Karl Boyd Brooks shows that, far from being a product of that activist decade, American environmental law emerged well before the first Earth Day, often in unexpected places far from Capitol Hill. Surveying the landscape from the end of World War II to Earth Day 1970, Brooks traces a dramatic shift in Americans' relationship to the environment and the emergence of new environmental statutes. He takes readers into legislative hearing rooms, lawyers' conferences, and administrators' offices to describe how Americans forged a new body of law that reflected their hopes for rescuing the land from air pollution, deforestation, and other potential threats. For while previous law had treated nature as a commodity, more and more Americans had come to see it as a national treasure worth preserving. Brooks explores the way key features of the New Deal's legal legacy influenced environmental law. This path-breaking environmental history examines how cultural, intellectual, and economic changes in postwar America brought about new solutions to environmental problems that threatened public health and degraded natural aesthetics. Visiting riverbanks and freeways, duck blinds and airsheds, Before Earth Day reveals the new strategies and efforts by which the unceasing process of legal change created environmental law. And through real-world examples-how Los Angelenos pressed cases about water and air quality, how an Idaho lawyer helped clients pursue new environmental regulations, how citizens challenged government and corporate plans to dam rivers-Brooks demonstrates that key changes in property, procedure, contract, and other legal rules in those early years stimulated the national environmental laws to come. Gracefully written and meticulously researched, Brooks's work dramatically updates our understanding of the origins of environmental law. By taking the postwar years more seriously, he shows that earlier actions across the country played a central role in shaping the structure and goals of well-known federal laws passed during the "environmental decade" of the seventies. Before Earth Day describes nothing less than an entirely new way of thinking, as environmental law emerged from local jurisdictions to reshape national agendas, firing the popular imagination and only then remodeling law school curricula. A long-needed corrective to standard political and legal history, it demonstrates both the longstanding environmental concerns of Americans and the resilience of law.

Beyond Earth Day

Beyond Earth Day PDF Author: Gaylord Nelson
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299180433
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Gaylord Nelson’s legacy is known and respected throughout the world. He was a founding father of the modern environmental movement and creator of one of the most influential public awareness campaigns ever undertaken on behalf of global environmental stewardship: Earth Day. Nelson died in 2005, but his message in this book is still timely and urgent, delivered with the same eloquence with which he articulated the nation’s environmental ills throughout the decades. He details the planet’s most critical concerns—from species and habitat losses to global climate change and population growth. In outlining strategies for planetary health, Nelson inspires citizens to reassert environmentalism as a national priority. Included in this reprint is a new preface by Gaylord Nelson’s daughter, Tia Nelson.

The Malthusian Moment

The Malthusian Moment PDF Author: Thomas Robertson
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813553350
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Although Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) is often cited as the founding text of the U.S. environmental movement, in The Malthusian Moment Thomas Robertson locates the origins of modern American environmentalism in twentieth-century adaptations of Thomas Malthus’s concerns about population growth. For many environmentalists, managing population growth became the key to unlocking the most intractable problems facing Americans after World War II—everything from war and the spread of communism overseas to poverty, race riots, and suburban sprawl at home. Weaving together the international and the domestic in creative new ways, The Malthusian Moment charts the explosion of Malthusian thinking in the United States from World War I to Earth Day 1970, then traces the just-as-surprising decline in concern beginning in the mid-1970s. In addition to offering an unconventional look at World War II and the Cold War through a balanced study of the environmental movement’s most contentious theory, the book sheds new light on some of the big stories of postwar American life: the rise of consumption, the growth of the federal government, urban and suburban problems, the civil rights and women’s movements, the role of scientists in a democracy, new attitudes about sex and sexuality, and the emergence of the “New Right.”

Letters to a Young Scientist

Letters to a Young Scientist PDF Author: Edward O. Wilson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0871407000
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson imparts the wisdom of his storied career to the next generation. Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career—both his successes and his failures—and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans’ depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being’s modest place in the planet’s ecosystem in his readers.