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Dec 15, 1000
Agricultural Revolution
10000 years ago: An agricultural revolution is a transition from the pre-agricultural period characterized by a Paleolithic diet, into an agricultural period characterized by a diet of cultivated foods; or a change to a more advanced and more productive form of agriculture. -
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes. -
John Muir
John Muir was a Scottish-American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of wilderness in the United States. His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. -
Walden by Henry David Thoreau
Walden is a book that is a reflection upon simple living in nature. It details Thoreau's life in a cabin in Massachusetts owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson over the course of two years, two months, and two days. -
Homestead Act
The Homestead Act was a United States federal law that gave an applicant ownership of land at little or no cost. In the United States, this originally consisted of 160 acres of land. Anyone who had never taken up arms against the U.S. government, was 21 years or older, or the head of a family, could file an application to claim a grant. -
Yellowstone National Park Founded
Congress established Yellowstone National Park in the Territories of Montana and Wyoming so that people could enjoy it. -
American Forestry Association Founded
American Forests is a 501 non-profit conservation organization, established in 1875, and dedicated to protecting and restoring healthy forest ecosystems. -
Exxon Valdez
It was an oil tanker that gained notoriety after running aground in Prince William Sound spilling hundreds of thousands of barrels of crude oil in Alaska. -
Yosemite Plus Sequoia National Park Founded
Congress created Yosemite National Park, home of such natural wonders as Half Dome and the giant sequoia trees. -
General Revision Act
The General Revision Act of 1891 reversed previous policy initiatives in which land fraud was readily accessible on the behalf of wealthy individuals and corporations. -
Sierra Club Founded
John Muir was elected as the first President. In its first conservation campaign, the club led efforts to defeat a proposed reduction in the boundaries of Yosemite National Park. -
Lacey Act
it is unlawful to import, export, sell, acquire, or purchase fish, wildlife or plants that are taken, possessed, transported, or sold: in violation of U.S. or Indian law, or in interstate or foreign commerce involving any fish, wildlife, or plants taken possessed or sold in violation of State or foreign law. -
Start of Golden Age Of Conservation
Roosevelt used his power to protect wildlife in the US. He moved the Forest Reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture. He also extended the reserves. -
Period: to
Golden Age Of Conservation (Theodore Roosevelt)
Roosevelt used his power to protect wildlife in the US. He moved the Forest Reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture. He also extended the reserves. -
First National Wildlife Refuge Established
By Executive Order of March 14, 1903, President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt established Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge, along Florida's central Atlantic coast, as the first unit of the present National Wildlife Refuge System. -
U.S. Forest Service Founded
The United States Forest Service is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that administers the nation's 155 national forests and 20 national grasslands, which encompass 193 million acres. -
Gifford Pinchot
Pinchot served as the first Chief of the United States Forest Service from 1905 until his firing in 1910. -
Aldo Leopold
Leopold oversaw the newly implemented Division of Forestry in the Department of Agriculture, donated money to Yale University to begin one of the nation's first forestry schools. Hearing of this development, the teenage Leopold decided on forestry as a vocation. -
Audubon Society Founded
The National Audubon Society is an American, non-profit, environmental organization dedicated to conservation. Incorporated in 1905, Audubon is one of the oldest of such organizations in the world and uses science, education and grassroots advocacy to advance its conservation mission. -
Antiquities Act
This law gives the President of the United States the authority to, by presidential proclamation, restrict the use of particular public land owned by the federal government. The Act has been used over a hundred times since its passage. -
Congree Banned Further Withdrawals
Through provisions embedded in the Forest Service sub-section of an Agriculture appropriations act, Congress renames Forest Reserves "National Forests," and forbids their further creation or enlargement in six Western states (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, or Wyoming), except by act of Congress; when the bill passes Congress on February 25, Pinchot and his staff work feverishly to identify sixteen million acres of forest in these six states which are designated as national forests -
End of Golden Age Of Conservation
Roosevelt used his power to protect wildlife in the US. He moved the Forest Reserves from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Agriculture. He also extended the reserves. -
U.S. National Park Service Founded
The National Park Service is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all U.S. national parks, many American national monuments, and other conservation and historical properties with various title designations. -
Dust Bowl
1930s: The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the US and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent wind erosion caused the phenomenon. -
Civilian Conservation Corps Founded
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families as part of the New Deal. -
Soil Conservation Service Founded
The Natural Resources Conservation Service, formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service, is an agency of the United States Department of Agriculture that provides technical assistance to farmers and other private landowners and managers. -
Migratory And Bird Hunting Stamp Act
The Duck Stamp Act provided funds for the conservation of migratory waterfowl. Through it, mistakes could be remedied by restoring some drained land to the country’s wildlife, and some marshlands not yet destroyed could be saved.
Under the Act, any person who hunts ducks, geese, swans or brant and is 16 years of age or older must carry a current Duck Stamp on which he has written his signature in ink. This qualifies the hunter as a legal wildfowl hunter. -
Taylor Grazing Act
The Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, signed by President Roosevelt, was intended to stop injury to the public grazing lands by preventing overgrazing and soil deterioration; to provide for their orderly use, improvement, and development; and to stabilize the livestock industry dependent upon the public range. -
Fish Plus Wildlife Service Founded
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service is a federal government agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior dedicated to the management of fish, wildlife, and natural habitats. The mission of the agency reads as "working with others to conserve, protect, and enhance fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people." -
Silent Spring Published By Rachel Carson
Silent Spring is an environmental science book. The book documented the detrimental effects on the environment—particularly on birds—of the indiscriminate use of pesticides. Carson accused the chemical industry of spreading disinformation and public officials of accepting industry claims unquestioningly. -
Clean Air Act
The first federal legislation to actually pertain to " controlling " air pollution was the Clean Air Act of 1963. The 1963 act accomplished this by establishing a federal program within the U.S. Public Health Service and authorized research into techniques for monitoring and controlling air pollution. -
Wilderness Act
The Wilderness Act of 1964 was written by Howard Zahniser of The Wilderness Society. It created the legal definition of wilderness in the United States, and protected 9.1 million acres of federal land. -
Clean Air Act
Within the CAA, Congress also recognized the hazards of motor vehicle exhaust and mandated research, investigations, surveys, and experiments on interstate pollution from the use of high sulfur coal and oil. In 1965, the Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act amended the 1963 Clean Air Act. -
Wild And Scenic Rivers Act
The National Wild and Scenic Rivers System was created by Congress in 1968 to preserve certain rivers with outstanding natural, cultural, and recreational values in a free-flowing condition for the enjoyment of present and future generations. -
Cuyahoga River In Cleveland, Ohio Caught Fire
The Cuyahoga River is located in Northeast Ohio in the United States and feeds Lake Erie. The river is famous for being "the river that caught fire," helping to spur the environmental movement in the late 1960s. -
NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act)
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires federal agencies to integrate environmental values into their decision making processes by considering the environmental impacts of their proposed actions and reasonable alternatives to those actions. -
First Earth Day
Earth Day 1970 capitalized on the emerging consciousness, channeling the energy of the anti-war protest movement and putting environmental concerns front and center. -
Environmental Protection Agemcy Established
The United States Environmental Protection Agency is an agency of the U.S. federal government which was created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. -
Clean Air Act
The 1970 amendments established procedures under which EPA sets national standards for air quality, required a 90% reduction in emissions from new automobiles by 1975, established a program to require the best available control technology at major new sources of air pollution, established a program to regulate air toxics, and greatly strengthened federal enforcement authority. -
FIFRA
The objective of FIFRA is to provide federal control of pesticide distribution, sale, and use. All pesticides used in the United States must be registered (licensed) by EPA. Registration assures that pesticides will be properly labeled and that, if used in accordance with specifications, they will not cause unreasonable harm to the environment. Use of each registered pesticide must be consistent with use directions contained on the label or labeling. -
OPEC Oil Embargo
The 1973 oil crisis began when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. By the end of the embargo in March 1974, The price of oil had risen from $3 per barrel to nearly $12. The oil crisis, or "shock", had many short-term and long-term effects on global politics and the global economy. It was later called the first oil shock. -
Endangered Species Act
When Congress passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973, it recognized that our rich natural heritage is of “esthetic, ecological, educational, recreational, and scientific value to our Nation and its people.” It further expressed concern that many of our nation’s native plants and animals were in danger of becoming extinct. -
Roland And Molina
Molina worked as a post-doctoral scholar in Rowland’s laboratory in 1974. They together heard a lecture, in which James Lovelock’s data on CFCs in the atmosphere was presented. Intrigued, they started further investigations. They discovered that CFCs decompose in sunlight, to release chlorine atoms. Chlorine atoms convert ozone to oxygen, and can then attack other ozone molecules. A single atom can destroy millions of ozone molecules before it is neutralized. -
FIFRA
The 1975 amendments to FIFRA required that the EPA Administrator consider the impacts of regulatory actions on production and prices of agricultural commodities and to notify the Secretary of Agriculture in advance of related rulemaking. Experimental use permits were also authorized for agricultural research activities. -
RCRA
The objectives of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) are to protect human health and the environment from the potential hazards of waste disposal, to conserve energy and natural resources, to reduce the amount of waste generated, and to ensure that wastes are managed in an environmentally sound manner. RCRA regulates the management of solid waste, hazardous waste, and underground storage tanks holding petroleum products or certain chemicals. -
Clean Air Act
Congress created the 1977 amendments to aid states in achieving their original goals. One major revision tightens pollution control for newly built sources and brings older plants under the Clean Air Act’s regulations. It instituted the New Source Review (NSR), which requires companies to obtain permits before modifying equipment. -
Clean Water Act
The Clean Water Act (CWA) establishes the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters. -
Surface Mining Control And Reclamation Act
The Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) is the primary federal law that regulates the environmental effects of coal mining in the United States. SMCRA created two programs: one for regulating active coal mines and a second for reclaiming abandoned mine lands. -
FIFRA
The 1978 amendments to FIFRA reauthorized appropriations and stipulated the authorized uses of data supplied by an applicant seeking to register pesticides, as well as procedures to be followed by EPA if additional data is needed to support an existing pesticide registration. In addition, the amendments provided clarification of State authority to regulate the sale or use of pesticides and stipulated that States have primary responsibility for pesti -
Love Canal, NY
Hooker Chemical sold the site to the Niagara Falls School Board in 1953 for $1, with a deed explicitly detailing the presence of the waste, and including a liability limitation clause about the contamination. The construction efforts of housing development, combined with particularly heavy rainstorms, released the chemical waste, leading to a public health emergency and an urban planning scandal. -
3 Mile Island Nuclear Accident
The Three Mile Island accident was a partial nuclear meltdown that occurred in one of the two Three Mile Island nuclear reactors in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States. It was the worst accident in U.S. commercial nuclear power plant history. -
Alaskan Land Acts
It provided varying degrees of special protection to over 157,000,000 acres of land, including national parks, national wildlife refuges, national monuments, wild and scenic rivers, recreational areas, national forests, and conservation areas. -
CERCLA
The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), commonly known as Superfund, was enacted by Congress on December 11, 1980. This law created a tax on the chemical and petroleum industries and provided broad Federal authority to respond directly to releases or threatened releases of hazardous substances that may endanger public health or the environment. -
Bhopal, India
Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and other chemicals. The toxic substance made its way in and around the shanty towns located near the plant. Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259. -
Chernobyl
The Chernobyl disaster was a catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities of the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire released large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere, which spread over much of the western USSR and Europe. -
CERCLA
The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act (SARA) of 1986 reauthorized CERCLA to continue cleanup activities around the country. Several site-specific amendments, definitions clarifications, and technical requirements were added to the legislation, including additional enforcement authorities. -
Montreal Protocol
The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was designed to reduce the production and consumption of ozone depleting substances in order to reduce their abundance in the atmosphere, and thereby protect the earth’s fragile ozone Layer. -
FIFRA
Amendments were again made on October 25, 1988, The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act Amendments. Substantive changes which impact the Fish and Wildlife Service were not made. -
Clean Air Act
Congress enacted another major modification in 1990; the Clean Air Act of 1990 introduces a permit program for large sources that release pollutants into the air. The permit includes information on which pollutants are being released, how much may be released, and steps the source’s owner or operator are taking to reduce the pollution. -
CERCLA
In 1990, Congress passed a four-year extension of the response authority for CERCLA. -
Energy Policy Act Of 1992
The Energy Policy Act is a United States government act. It was passed by Congress and set goals, created mandates, and amended utility laws to increase clean energy use and improve overall energy efficiency in the United States. -
Desert Protection Act
The Act establishes the Death Valley and Joshua Tree National Parks and the Mojave National Preserve in the California deserts. Congress found that federally owned desert lands of southern California constitute a public wildland resource of extraordinary and inestimable value for current and future generations. -
Start of Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which commits its Parties by setting internationally binding emission reduction targets. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity. -
Period: to
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which commits its Parties by setting internationally binding emission reduction targets. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity. -
World Population Hits 6 Billion
The world’s population topped the 6 billion mark Tuesday, with the birth of a baby in Sarajevo. To some, that’s cause for celebration. We are healthier and living longer than ever before. But others worry the milestone is actually a harbinger of doom: they fear further environmental degradation and human suffering. -
End of Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which commits its Parties by setting internationally binding emission reduction targets. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity.
