1. In American studies, the 1970s have typically been viewed as a decade of transition and
conflicting goals forged from the “revolutions” of the 1960s. Historiography relating to the
decade’s environmental movement proves no exception to this trend. Time and time again, this
struggle is reiterated as a teleological outcome of conversations set in motion by widespread
fears of technological catastrophe, the theories of academics such as Rachel Carson, and the
lifestyle of countercultural forces that defined post-war America. In addition, an all-too-common
image of “Deep Green” hippies locked in ideological combat with conservative business elites
pervades these dialogues. This tendency extends to the present, with some commenting that
current debate over global warming has boiled down to nothing more than a “culture war” over
“values…and ideology.”1
Unfortunately, this view of history overlooks the unique significance of 1970s
environmentalism. On a technical level, one cannot begin to comprehend its contributions
without understanding previous revelations regarding humanity’s ability to influence ecology.
However, appreciation of 1970s environmental achievements should not be defined by the shifts
of the 1960s. This paper argues that the 1970s marked the “practical maturation” of
American environmentalism and inception of its most enduring scientific justifications.
“Practical maturation” defines improvement and efficiency in instigating change in political
affairs, while “inception” refers to development of three groundbreaking scientific realizations
that marked turning points in the refinement, dissemination, and endurance of environmental
thought. The former is analyzed through the success of political environmental institutions and
civic demands. The latter is explored through an analysis of 1970s scientific literature’s attempt
1 Andrew J. Hoffman, “Climate Science as Culture War,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2012, accessed
4/5/14, http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/climate_science_as_culture_war.

2. to qualify warnings of ecological catastrophe and quantify the extent of damages, followed by an
assessment of its success through future peer review and influence. In conclusion, political and
philosophical breakthroughs are brought together to paint an effective and complex
environmental movement—one brought to adolescence through the youth of the Cold War, but
physically mature and learning “the way of the world” by the end of the 1970s.
With this being said, no understanding of ‘70s environmental history is complete without
some knowledge of the movement’s foundations. Essentially, the story of “environmentalism”
details the story of an unprecedented amendment to centuries-old intuition—a reversal of the
belief that human activity could never upset the “God-given” “state of nature” in its pursuit of
material “progress.” The rise of the Industrial Revolution from the mid-18th century to the first
decades of the 1800s wrought groundbreaking prosperity upon the United Kingdom and the
United States and spurred a popular consensus that all technological advancements equated to
change for the good of mankind.2 The first serious blow to this paradigm occurred approximately
two decades before the dawn of the 1970s, as total war radically altered notions of the
destructive capabilities of human technology. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
on August 6-9, 1945 epitomized the worst of these fears, and concerns about the devastating
power of nuclear weapons extended beyond the popular and occasionally laughable theories of
“cold war culture.” For the first time, scientists began to publically support the notion that human
invention had reached a capacity to alter the state of the Earth. Upon or around his witnessing the
detonation of the first atomic bomb in Trinity, New Mexico on July 16, 1945, Manhattan Project
director Robert Oppenheimer (mis)quoted the Bhagavad Gita by stating “I am become death, the
2 Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Cambridge, Massachusetts:Harvard University Press,
2003), 7.

3. destroyer of worlds.”3 That same year, Oppenheimer and other Project participants formed the
Federation of Atomic Scientists advocating international control over atomic weapons.4 Albert
Einstein publically asserted that any World War waged after a nuclear exchange would be fought
with “rocks”5 and that widespread use of these devices would kill “perhaps two thirds of the
people of the Earth.”6
As recognition of mankind’s newfound ability to destroy the world at the push of a button
leapt from the unspoken fringe to the forefront of foreign policy, other questions regarding lethal
technology began circulating among scientists and set the stage for important 1970s
breakthroughs. Crucial to these was the widespread use of DDT, a synthetic pesticide first
deployed in the fight against malaria at the close of World War II. As the compound became
popularized throughout the United States, multiple studies linked its use to cancer and species
endangerment.7 This evidence motivated biologist Rachel Carson to publish her 1962 book Silent
Spring, a work widely considered to be a pivotal awakening for “environmental consciousness.”8
The book’s opening remarks condensed the leap from atomic to synthetic dangers in stating
“chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature
of the world—the very nature of life.”9 Carson warned that “every human being is now subjected
3 James A. Hijiya, “The Gita of Robert Oppenheimer,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society vol.144,
no. 2 (June, 2000): 123, http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/Hijiya.pdf.
4 Federation of Atomic Scientistsm, “About FAS,” Fas.org, updated 2013, accessed 4/22/14.
https://www.fas.org/about/index.html.
5 Anne Rooney, Einstein In His Own Words (New York: Gramercy Books, 2006), 156.
6 Abby Cessna, “Albert Einstein Quotes,” Universetoday.com, Updated 2/11/10, accessed 4/20/14,
http://www.universetoday.com/55516/albert-einstein-quotes/.
7 Brenda Eskenazi, et al., “The Pine River Statement: Human Health Consequences ofDDT Use,” Environmental
Health Perspect Sep 2009; 117(9): 1359–1367, published online May 4, 2009,
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2737010/.
8 Eliza Griswold, “How ‘Silent Spring’ Ignited the Environmental Movment,” New York Times, published 9/21/12,
accessed 3/30/14, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/23/magazine/how-silent-spring-ignited -the-environmental-
movement.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
9 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962), 6.

4. to contact with dangerous chemicals”10 and cited arsenic, benzene hexachloride, and herbicide 2,
4-D among a plethora of toxic hazards in addition to DDT.11 From the book’s publication to her
death in 1964, Carson argued for an end to DDT’s use out of concern for human survival in
ravaged environments. An avalanche of ecological speculation followed in her footsteps.
The remainder of the 1960s saw to a steady stream of new and dire environmental
predictions, the beginnings of environmentalist legislation, and the first hint of tangible
consequences that went on to preoccupy 1970s reformers and theorists. Politically, 1963 saw to
the movement of all nuclear weapons tests underground via the U.S. and U.S.S.R.’s Nuclear Test
Ban Treaty, partially prompted by research into the presence of strontium 90 in children’s
teeth.12 Three pieces of Congressional legislation, the Water Quality, Noise Control, and Solid
Waste Disposal Acts of 1965, established environmental quality standards for U.S. states. Two
years later, the Clean Air Act authorized planning grants to state air pollution control agencies.
One day after the close of 1969, President Richard M. Nixon signed the National Environmental
Policy Act into law.13 Philosophically, December 1, 1968 witnessed the publication of Garrett
Hardin’s essay “Tragedy of the Commons” in Science magazine.14 On a more alarming note, Dr.
Paul R. Ehrlich’s 1968 bestseller The Population Bomb warned of the collapse of civilization due
to unrestrained population growth within twenty years.15 Tangibly, environmental disasters
supplemented the flourishing movements’ claims to legitimacy. A January 31, 1969 oil well spill
10 Ibid, 15.
11 Ibid, 50-51, 59, 75-80.
12 Dennis Hevesi. “Dr. Louise Reiss, 90, Who Helped Ban Atomic Testing, Dies at 90,” New York Times, published
1/10/2011, accessed 4/19/14, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/science/10reiss.html?_r=0.
13 Matthew J. Lindstrom and Zachary A. Smith, The National Environmental Policy Act (College Station: Texas
A&M University Press, 2001), 50.
14 Garrett Hardin, “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science: Vol. 162 no. 3859 (13 December 1968): 1243-1248,
DOI: 10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.
15 Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb (New York: Ballantine Books, 1968), 131.

5. in Santa Barbara, California coated 30 miles of beaches with tar until its capping a week later.16
Yet most dramatic of all calamities was the June 22, 1969 ignition of the Cuyahoga River in
Cleveland. Polluted to the point of combustion, an oil slick blaze17 delivered $100,000 worth of
damage to two railroad bridges and provoked national outrage.18
Amassing these facts, 1945-1962 can be historically categorized as beginning of
environmentalist questioning, while the remainder of the 1960s represent the birth and early
development of formal “environmentalism.” As the 1970s dawned, the idea that human activity
could severely damage natural environments and public well-being had cracked the academic
mainstream. Russell E. Train, future administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency,
summarized this increasingly popular sentiment at a 1970 speech before the American Public
Health Association by stating “we are faced with a worsening health crisis of planetary
proportions…our air and water and soil and cities are sick, and the sickness is people.”19 Backed
by U. S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, America’s first “Earth Day” took place on April 22, 1970 and
organized general themes of environmental degradation for a public audience.20 The legislative
victories of 1965-1969 also reveal that, by the end of the 1960s, federal law was beginning to
organize a monopoly of force in favor of environmentalist desires. The course of the next decade
saw to the improvement of environmental law enforcement and new governmental actions across
a broader spectrum of environmentalist concerns. Additionally, environmentalists acting within
the American legal system helped to hold polluters accountable under the threat of lawsuits.
16 Dr. N.K. Sanders, “The Santa Barbara Oil Spill: Impact of the Environment (1969)” in The Environmental
Moment: 1968-1972,ed. David Stradling, (Seattle: University of Washington Press,2012), 54-55.
17 Michael Rotman, “Cuyahoga River Fire,” Cleveland Historical,accessed April 19, 2014, http://
clevelandhistorical.org/items/show/63.
18 Louis Stokes, “Address in Congress Supporting Rivers and Harbors and Flood Control Act of 1970, delivered
12/7/1970, Congressional Record,v. 115, part 14 (91st Congress,1st Session), page 40150.
19 Russell E. Train “Prescription for the Planet.” (presentation,American Public Health Association,New York, NY,
1970).
20 Mary Graham, The Morning After Earth Day (Washington,D.C., The Brookings Institution, 1999), 1.

6. These combined efforts of 1970s activists defined an effort which, in the words of journalist
Mary Graham, would come to represent “a rare and remarkable achievement in American
government: the successful introduction of a new theme into national policy.”21
Perhaps no other step better assisted the “mature” enforcement of environmental
regulations than the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency. President Richard M.
Nixon addressed the United States Congress on July 2, 1970, announcing the creation of the new
organization to strong approval.22 On December 2, 1970, an executive order entitled
“Reorganization Plan No. 3” formally established the Environmental Protection Agency;
following this, President Nixon appointed William D. Ruckelshaus as first administrator.23 These
actions fundamentally rearranged the enforcement of environmental legislation. Various legal
functions formally bestowed upon the Secretaries and Departments of the Interior, Agriculture,
Health, Education, and Welfare and upon the Atomic Energy Commission by the Water
Pollution Control Act, Atomic Energy Act of 1954, and previous legislation related to
insecticides, food, cosmetics, air pollution and waste management were now organized under the
responsibilities of the EPA.24
The benefits of this approach established groundbreaking efficiency. In his explanation to
Congress, Nixon argued “the Government’s environmentally-related actions have grown up
piecemeal over the years…the time has come to organize them rationally and systematically.”25
Furthermore, the President observed that “our national government today is not structured to
21 Graham, 3.
22 Joel A. Mintz, Enforcement At The EPA: High Stakes and Hard Choices (Austin, TX; University of Texas Press,
1995), 20
23 Ibid.
24 Richard Nixon, “Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970” F.R. 15623 84 Stra. 2086, effective December 2, 1970 , 202-
203. <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title5/pdf/USCODE-2011-title5-app-reorganiz-other-
dup92.pdf>.
25 Richard Nixon, “Message ofthe President,” (speech, Washington D.C., July 9, 1970), United States Government
Printing Office, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title5/pdf/USCODE-2011-title5-app-reorganiz-
other-dup92.pdf.

7. make a coordinated attack on the pollutants which debase the air we breathe, the water we drink,
and the land that grows our food...the environment must be perceived as a single, inter-related
system, [and] present assignments of departmental responsibilities do not reflect this
interrelatedness.”26 As the 1970s progressed, Nixon’s observations were vindicated as the
responsibilities of environmental enforcement previously reserved for state and local
governments shifted to the federal government. The “interrelation” of federal powers related to
environmental protection curtailed ecological abuses in a previously unseen display of efficiency
and affectivity; in short, environmental protection “matured” on a national stage.
To demonstrate its commitment in the face of extensive publicity, the EPA robustly
asserted its authority within days of formation and wrought tangible changes. The remaining
weeks of 1970 witnessed the Agency’s enforcement of the Clean Air Act, setting new criteria for
air pollutants, automobile emissions, and state air quality plans.27 1972 saw to the limitation of
lead use in consumer goods and beginnings of Great Lakes decontamination.28 Crucially, the
Environmental Protection Agency extended theory to practice through its 1972 ban on DDT use
within the United States.29 In 1973, the Agency began a “phase-out” on the presence of lead in
gasoline that would reduce atmospheric lead content by 98% nation-wide.30 In this same year,
the first permit limiting factory pollution discharges into waterways was enacted over more than
45,000 facilities.31 Through 1974, water pollution standards would continue to improve through
the enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act.32 1975 witnessed the Agency’s monitoring of
the performance of motor vehicles under new fuel economy regulations, leading to the
26 Ibid.
27 Carol M. Browner, “Statement on EPA’s 25th Anniversary,” Environmental Protection Agency,updated
December 1, 1995, accessed 4/2/14, http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/statement-epas-25th-anniversary.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.

8. installation of catalytic converters in new machines.33 In 1976, new hazardous waste standards
were enacted that led to the support of a 1978 ban of carcinogenic PCBs (or
polychlorinatedbiphenyls) nationwide.34 1979 closed the 1970s with an additional ban on two
popular herbicides containing cancer-causing dioxins.35
These reforms were not initiated without the conquest of many significant hurdles, yet the
resolution of each further signaled “practical environmentalism’s” “maturity.” The transfer of
environmental oversight from the state to federal level generated significant resentment of the
EPA in the eyes of local authorities.36 Congressional oversight also led to resistance by those
affected by politically unpopular EPA decisions.37 However, the greatest obstacle of all stemmed
from relative ignorance over what constituted sound “environmental protection.” Politically, pre-
existing legislation offered few directions, standards, and requisites for curtailing pollution.38
Around 1972, this condition was relieved through the passage new environmental legislation
(including the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the Ocean Dumping Act) with clearer
parameters.39 Scientifically, technical solutions to the reversal of pollution would be realized
through government-sponsored research. Despite each of these challenges, the Environmental
Protection Agency emerged by the mid-1970s as a rapidly growing (and localizing) federal
force.40 While rapid expansion wrought a period of readjustment, the EPA also succeeded in
improving its relationships with state officials.41 The election of President Jimmy Carter in 1976
also brought respected environmentalists to the agency’s helm. By the end of the 1970s, EPA
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Ibid.
36 Mintz, 23.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., 22.
39 Ibid., 22-23.
40 Ibid.,, 24.
41 Ibid.,, 25.

9. enforcement improved in efficiency through a drift toward civil litigation42 (consequently
extending environmental concerns into the Department of Justice).43 These advancements in
organization and efficiency clearly indicate that the institution, in the words of EPA Region V
enforcement manager David Kee, was “definitely…maturing.”44
From these facts, history asserts that the actions and evolution of the Environmental
Protection Agency marked a “maturation” of ecological defense. The transfer of enforcement
from local agencies to a national organization, coupled with new and/or improved legislative
foundations justifying intervention and organizing its activities, produced an upright, firm, and
logical process to environmental regulation. This new system wrought undeniable progress for
those looking to curtail the contamination of ecosystems. In short, 1970s environmentalism
discovered not just how to work within a system, but to significantly change the priorities,
process and externalities of that system—1960s thoughts matured into successful 1970s actions.
However, it is important to understand that not everyone supported new environmental
legislation, nor subscribed to an alleged “sense of impending crisis” regarding the natural world.
Many critics came not from the realm of big business but from the realm of academia. John
Maddox, British science writer and editor of Nature magazine, argued in 1972 that “the
doomsday cause would be more telling if it were more securely grounded in facts, better
informed by a sense of history and an awareness of economics and less cataclysmic in temper.”45
Others denied long-term predictions of catastrophe more emphatically, forcing environmentalists
to refine and re-examine their arguments and evidence. Out of this scrutiny emerged the second
crucial breakthrough in the history of environmentalism— its realization of the “big picture” of
42 Ibid., 28.
43 Ibid., 30.
44 Ibid., 24.
45 John Maddox, The Doomsday Syndrome (New York: McGraw Hill, 1972), 4.

10. ecological crises in the face of dissent. This philosophical struggle sought to answer critics by
attempting to quantify the presence, scale, and future of world wide ecological degradation.
While its tangible degrees of success and legacy would prove elusive for many years to come,
these lines of defense, conceived in the 1970s, ultimately laid the foundation for the most
enduring, rigorous, and scientifically justified environmental arguments of the past four decades.
If Rachel Carson defined best-selling environmentalist literature of the 1960s, then
scientists Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers dominated all environmental
writings of the 1970s and provided one of the decade’s most important scientific insights.
Following commission from the Club of Rome (an organization of economic, scientific, and
political leaders) and the Volkswagen Foundation, these researchers co-authored a landmark
book seeking to answer questions regarding global economic sustainability. This collaborative
effort, entitled The Limits to Growth, was published in 1972 and became an instant international
sensation, standard university text,46 and the best-selling environmental book in world history.47
Prior to 1972, philosophical speculation into the negative consequences of exponential growth in
a finite world can be traced as far back as 1798 (when scholar Thomas Robert Malthus warned
that unrestrained population growth would ultimately produce poverty). The crucial distinction
of The Limits to Growth stemmed from its efforts to quantify the “possible futures” produced by
externalities.48 Constructing a “World3” computer model to process data investigated by the
Systems Dynamics Group within the Sloan School of Management at MIT,49 the team was
tasked with estimating the 21st Century society’s relation with the environment. These models
46 Donella Meadows,Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows, Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (White River
Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004), x.
47 Andrea Wild, “Examining the Limits to Growth,” Csiro.au, 11/11/2008 (updated 8/9/2013), accessed 4/21/14,
http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Multimedia/CSIROpod/Growth-Limits.aspx.
48 Meadows, xvii.
49 Meadows, ix.

11. developed from the notion that exponential economic growth rendered “static index”
measurements of known resource reserves obsolete (since current yearly usage, increasing
constantly, cannot be divided by total estimated reserves to predict future availability).
Composing the formula y = ln((rXs)+1)/r (or “’years left’ equals ln times (‘continuous
compounding growth rate’ multiplied by ‘static reserve’ plus 1) divided by ‘reserve quantity’”),
the researchers argued that the true rate of an individual resource’s use could be quantified.50
Extending crucial resource depletions to the totality of the world economy forecasted twelve
possible scenarios, each unambiguously forcing an end to civilization’s physical growth in the
World3 model at some point in the 21st century.51 Meadows et al. summarized their findings
robustly:
“Can this physical growth realistically continue forever? Our answer is no! Growth in
population and capital increases the ecological footprint of humanity, the burden
humanity places on the world ecosystem, unless there is a successful effort to avoid such
an increase…Once the footprint has grown beyond the sustainable level…it must
eventually come down—either through a managed process…or through the work of
nature…There is no question about whether growth in the ecological footprint will stop,
the only questions are when and by what means.”52
While skeptics such as economist Robert M. Solow initially lambasted its models as “bad
science and therefore bad publicity,”53 the book’s main ideas have withstood forty years of peer
review and mark a clear breakthrough in environmentalist rhetoric and argumentation. Crucial to
50 Meadows, 60.
51 Meadows, xi.
52 Meadows, 48.
53 Robert M. Solow, "Is the End of the World at Hand?." Challenge (05775132) 16, no. 1 (1973): 39,
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40719094?uid=3739864&uid=2129&uid=2&uid=70&uid=4&uid=3739256&
sid=21104124785403.

12. The Limits to Growth’s legacy rests its modern conceptualization of “sustainability,” the first
recorded instance54 of a term which has gone to spark “revolutionary” paradigm shifts55 in the
aims of modern economic development. The book has been cited as an influence by former Vice
President and environmental advocate Al Gore56 and has promoted the publication of books such
as Steven Stoll’s The Great Delusion, Richard Heinberg’s The End of Growth, and Ross
Jackson’s Occupy World Street. Furthermore, the scientific and academic community has
generally supported the book’s predictions and methodology over the course of the past forty
years. A 2008 paper entitled “A Comparison of ‘The Limits to Growth’ with Thirty Years of
Reality” from the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization
concluded “that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of the business-
as usual scenario…which results in collapse of the system midway through the 21st Century.”57
A 2009 American Scientist article also affirmed these sentiments.58 Additionally, the impact of
the book on future environmental publications is beyond dispute. Since 1972, two updated
editions of The Limits to Growth have received release, each contributing new data favoring the
original hypotheses of Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jørgen Randers. The Limits to
Growth, in short, marked a crucial instance in the grand scheme of environmentalism—the
beginnings of a movement’s tangible, scientifically justifiable contention that endless economic
54 Donovan Finn, “Our Uncertain Future: Can Good Planning Create Sustainable Communities?” PhD dissertation,
University of Illinois, Ann Arbor: Proquest/UMI, 2009 (Publication No. AAT 3362782).
55 Andres R. Edwards, The Sustainability Revolution:Portrait of a ParadigmShift (Canada: New Society
Publishers, 2007), 6-7.
56 E.J. Dionne, "Greening of Democrats: An 80's Mix of Idealism And Shrewd Politics". New York Times, updated
6/14/ 1989, accessed 4/3/14, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/14/us/washington-talk-greening-democrats-80-s-
mix-idealism-shrewd-politics.html.
57 Graham Turner, “A Comparison of the Limits To Growth with Thirty Years of Reality” CSIRO, June 2008, ISSN:
1834-5638, http://www.fraw.org.uk/files/limits/csiro_2008.pdf.
58 Charles A. S. Hall and John W. Day Jr., “Revisiting the Limits to Growth After Peak Oil,” American Scientist,97
(2009): 230 -238, http://www.esf.edu/efb/hall/2009-05Hall0327.pdf.

13. expansion is “unsustainable” in a world of finite resources. However, this was not the only
breakthrough attributable to a 1970s hypothesis.
While 1960s environmentalism grasped a basic understanding of life’s dependence on
balances in nature, two 1970s theorists refined life’s influence on natural cycles into “one of the
most provocative ideas to have been put forward in the second half of the twentieth century.”59
This “idea,” put forward by James E. Lovelock and Lynn Margulis in 1974, stemmed from
observations that chemical constituents in Earth’s oceans, soil, and atmosphere differed by
factors of millions from those predicted by physical chemistry.60 What became known as the
“Gaia Hypothesis” postulated “a new view of the atmosphere, one in which it is seen as a
component part of the biosphere rather than as a mere environment for life.”61 In other words,
life cycles were postulated to control global chemical (and hence, “environmental”) cycles. The
implication that humanity constituted one component of global homeostasis and that the
chemical emissions produced by life could alter a delicate equilibrium neatly packaged the
writings of Carson and others as a formal scientific hypothesis.
The late 1970s also marked the beginning of scientific consensus around yet another
“worldwide” ecological issue. In a mainstream affirmation of a hypothesis relating to global
environmental degradation, academic researchers began to unite behind the idea that human
activities could alter weather patterns worldwide. “Climate change,” a term used interchangeably
with “global warming” in the context of current affairs, refers to “substantial change in Earth’s
climate that lasts for an extended period of time [and] causes an increase in the average
59 Ross Jackson, Occupy World Street (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012), 166.
60 Peter Russell, The Global Brain: The Awakening Earth in a New Century (United States of America: Floris
Books, 2007) 36.
61 James E. Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere: the Gaia
Hypothesis,” Tellus Series A, Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography vol. 26, issue: 1-2 (Manuscript received
May 8; revised version August 20, 1973): DOI: 10.3402/tellusa.v26i1-2.9731.

14. temperature of the lower atmosphere.”62 The first historical glimpses of the anthropogenic (or
“human-caused”) climate change debate have been linked to the work of Joseph Fourier, who
first established that the temperature of the Earth is regulated at levels greater than those seen in
a perfect vacuum by the atmospheric gases.63 “Natural philosopher” John Tyndall discovered the
strong radiation blocking effect of carbon dioxide in 1864,64 and Swedish scientist Svante
Arrhenius calculated that a 50% increase in carbon dioxide would raise global temperatures by 5
or 6 degrees Celsius shortly after.65 Follow up studies in the 1920s under seemingly controlled
conditions cast doubts on the notion that excess carbon dioxide would significantly alter the
Earth’s temperature,66 though additional tests in the 1950s challenged this skepticism. Critics
repeatedly emphasized that weather patterns could not be forecasted through isolated data sets,
and that overall climate alterations were virtually impossible to detect due to a multitude of
uncontrollable variables. By the 1960s, a handful of scientists decided to pursue new computer
modeling techniques to isolate warming trends. The year 1960 also saw to analysis of the
atmospheric content of the planet Venus, which would be blamed for the planet’s hellish surface
temperatures through the “greenhouse effect” theory of Carl Sagan.67
The 1970s marked the beginnings of a permanent reversal of criticism. On November 14,
1971, the Mariner 9 space probe collected infrared interferometer spectrometer readings of Mars’
atmospheric temperature during a planet-enveloping dust storm.68 Its findings indicated “dust in
the atmosphere was warmer than usual…because the airborne dust absorbed much of the
62 YeSeul Kim et. al, “Definition: Climate Change,” Massachusetts Institute of Technology,updated 2006, accessed
3/26/14, http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2010/finalwebsite/background/globalwarming/definition.html.
63 Spencer R. Weart, The Discovery of Global Warming (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts,
2003) 2-3.
64 Ibid, 3-4.
65 Ibid, 5.
66 Ibid, 7.
67 Sagan, interview by Ron Doel, Aug. 27, 1991, AIP, tape 4 side 1 in Weart, 87.
68 National Aeronautics and Space Administration, The New Mars: The Discoveries of Mariner 9 (Washington D.C.:
U.S. Government Printing Office, 1974), 36.

15. available sunlight.”69 Most importantly, several localized storm systems were perpetuated by
convective air motion triggered by global atmospheric heat retention.70 This fact provided an
empirical demonstration of the notion of climate “feedbacks,” later described in a 1975 Norwich
symposium on climate fluctuations as “the only global climate change whose cause is known that
man has ever scientifically observed.”71 These findings helped revive the scientific study of
climate change on Earth.72 In 1977, the National Academy of Sciences’ newly formed committee
on climate change warned of “catastrophic” temperature increases over the course of the next
two-hundred years and affirmed the accuracy of computer-based general circulation models.73
Two years later, a Geneva “World Climate Conference” pitted skeptics and supporters and
marked a breakthrough moment in consensus. At the convention, 300 experts from over 50
sovereign nations concluded that increases in carbon dioxide “may result in significant and
possibly major long-term changes of the global-scale climate.”74 These conclusions have only
intensified over the course of the last forty years.
Since the 1970s, the legacy and durability of both realizations have been affirmed
repeatedly. Initial criticism of Lovelock and Margulis’ work stemmed from reductionist
evolutionary biologists, who argued that its core tenants and alleged teleology were untestable.75
However, these criticisms have been retracted and Gaia Hypothesis has since attained
mainstream acceptance in universities and scientific circles.76 Richard Dawkins, arguably the
world’s most famous living reductionist and early arch-skeptic of the theory, later praised
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid, 42
71 Weart, 166.
72 Weart 88.
73 National Academy of Sciences, Climate Research Board, Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment
(Washington D.C.: National Academy of Sciences, 1979), 2-3.
74 John W. Zillman, “A History of Climate Activities.” WMO Bulletin 58 (3) – July 2009 in Weart, 116.
75 Jackson, 166.
76 Jackson 167.

16. Lovelock and Margulis for “carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy...one
of the great achievements of twentieth century biology.”77 Additionally, consensus around
anthropogenic warming theories has dramatically expanded since the conclusion of the 1970s.
97.1% of peer reviewed academic theses taking a position on warming from 1991 to 2011
endorse an anthropogenic cause of the phenomenon.78 As of September 25, 2013, the United
Nations climate panel (or IPCC) declared 95% certainty among scientists that humans are the
“dominant cause” of climate change.79
Amassing these discoveries and their legacies, a second major conclusion can be drawn
to assess the significance of 1970s environmental history. In short, the affirmation and influence
of each hypothesis over the course of forty years marks the decade as a moment of profound
intellectual insight for the environmental movement. For the first time in history, ideas only
hinted at in previous decades received refinement, consolidation and/or revelation in testable
scientific theories. However, not all theories are worthy of “lasting historical significance.” Ex-
Gaia skeptic and ex-Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at
Oxford University Richard Dawkins has argued that the significance of “theories” falls into two
camps: those “theories” which form (in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary) “a mere
hypothesis, speculation, [or] conjecture” which is later disproven or produces no testable
predictions, and those that “have been confirmed or established by observation or experiment.”80
The implication of this dichotomy asserts that not all ideas are equally groundbreaking and that
theories in “sense two” are superior to theories in “sense one” for their development of falsifiable
77 John Brockman, The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996),
144.
78 John Cook et. al. “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature,”
Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024 (2013): doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024.
79 Matt McGrath, “IPCC Climate Report: Humans ‘Dominant Cause’ of Warming,” BBC, updated 9/27/13, accessed
4/26/14, http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24292615.
80 Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (New York: Free Press, 2009), 9-13.

17. paradigms for explaining reality. For environmental history, the 1970s saw to the advancement
of theories pertaining to the worldwide ecological impact of human activity from “sense one” to
“sense two.” Previously scattered and/or untestable warnings of humanity’s capacity to influence
the global environment emerged from the 70s as organized and falsifiable hypotheses. Yet these
ideas did not go the way of phlogiston theory, miasma disease theory and other debunked
footnotes in the history of science. The survival of each hypothesis after four decades of review
and reassessment legitimizes their status as “enduring scientific justifications.”
While this understanding does not fix the course of history as “teleological,” the truths of
science are indeed “fixed” into the workings of the natural world. The process of extracting these
truths varies with the flow of history, but once conceived, tested, and reviewed in the absence of
persecution (i.e. the Inquisition to Galileo) their influence on future thought is unstoppable. To
paraphrase neuroscientist and philosopher of science Sam Harris:81 with all things being equal, a
bulletproof hypothesis leads to “helpless agreement” among spectators. The Limits to Growth,
the Gaia Hypothesis and climate change consensus, forged in a society protected by the First
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, represent ideal case studies in the workings
of this principle—a non-random understanding of random information, leading to further non-
random refinement. Each also supports the notion that the understanding of a decade’s historical
significance involves input from other timeframes. Just as the political success of 1970s
environmentalism may only be understood through the events of the 1960s, so the philosophical
breakthroughs of 1970s environmentalism may only be appreciated through a look at the last
four decades.
81 Sam Harris, “’The End of Faith’ Judaism and its 2 Derivatives: Christianity and Islam.” Venusproject.org.
Updated 2005, accessed 4/7/14, http://www.venusproject.org/reason/end-of-faith.html.

18. In conclusion, the environmental movement of the 1970s represents a pivotal juncture in
scientific understanding and highly successful political force. Through an academically respected
model of investigation and debate, scientists across America began exploring possibilities
suggested by environmental paradigm shifts of the 1960s. While heatedly disputed from
inception to experimentation, the hypotheses of 1970s environmentalists ultimately succeeded in
conceiving the long-term consequences of an unsustainable global status quo. Yet these
revelations would be nothing but white noise if American civics ignored them and the
observations that influenced them. The organization and actions of the Environmental Protection
Agency, effectively systematized by the close of the 1970s, established effective means of
controlling ecological externalities. Despite the best efforts of reactionaries to reverse these gains
in subsequent decades, these processes continue to mediate environmentalist success to the
present day. Hence, history must remember the 1970s as a uniquely pivotal moment for
environmentalism—the decade that inaugurated lasting academic refinement and meaningful
political action. This was the moment where action superseded speculation, and subsequently,
this was the moment of environmentalism’s “practical maturity.” This was the moment of
intellectual clarity, affirmed through academic regulation and an influential legacy. An
understanding of the past or theory of the future cannot advance without this understanding, nor
will any meaningful change alter the environmental issues of present by forgetting the lessons of
the 1970s.

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