ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY: AN OVERVIEW

• Major Human Evolutionary Developments

  • Bipedalism
  • Binocular Vision
  • Opposable Thumb
  • Increased Brain Size
• Major Changes

  • Human Evolution
  • Agricultural Revolution
  • Urban Revolution
  • Industrial Revolution
  • Medical Revolution
  • Information and Globalization Revolution
• Hunter-Gatherers

  • Early hunter-gatherers are believed to have had minimal environmental impacts
  • Thought to have believed that animals and humans were nearly interchangeable
  • Migrated because of changing climate and to find new food sources
  • Advanced hunter-gathers may have killed off large animal populations, or manipulated forests to promote animal populations of choice
• Agricultural Revolution

  • Occurred 10,000-12,000 years ago
  • Believed to have started in Middle East, Southeast Asia, Northeast Africa, Mexico
  • Developed from annual fields of wild grasses and tubers
  • Domestication of plants or animals varies by amount available water
• Diffusion Theory of the Origins of Agriculture

  • Corn
  • Wheat
  • Rice
  • Barley
  • Yams
  • Potatoes
• Agricultural Practices and Wilderness

  • Started seeing themselves as separate from plants and animals; that they could be manipulated toward the survival of humans
  • Planted crops, no intensified agriculture
  • Slash and burn agriculture, also called “swidden” agriculture
• Agriculture Revolution

  
• Jericho – World’s Oldest City
• Indus Valley – First Planned City
• Urban Revolution

  • Higher population densities
  • Division of labor
  • Greater sense of security and wealth
  • Greater need for potable water and food
  • Invention motivated around movement of water and wastes; intensified agriculture
  • Concentration of human wastes
  • Increased infection due to human wastes and air borne diseases
• Wilderness and Judeo-Christians

  • Wilderness represents a refuge from oppressors, like the Pharaoh
  • A place of hardship, testing, and proving oneself, especially before God
  • A place that brings one closer to the spiritual life but also a place where monsters and evil spirits can lurk
  • Old Testament states that is it man’s role to overcome the wilderness and its wild beasts, to dominate it, to cultivate it, to make it suitable for human habitation
• Manifest destiny

  
• Frontier Era (1607-1890)

  • Homestead Act of 1860’s and the railroad brought humans to the plains
  • Humans viewed as conquers of environment, not caretakers
  • View of continent as having endless resources
  • Killing of animals for sport or dress
• John James Audubon He was an American ornithologist, naturalist, hunter, and painter. He painted, catalogued, and described the birds of North America between 1827 and 1836.
• 1846 - Smithsonian Institution Established John Smithson bequeathed his fortune, art and natural history collection in 1829 to the U.S. Government to start the institution.
• 1846 – Joseph Henry First Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.
• Spencer Baird Publishes Man and Nature First grand conceptualizing of man’s shaping, changing, controlling , and degrading nature
• Industrial-Medical Revolution

  • Shift from wood to coal as a fuel source
  • New dependence on machinery
  • More wasteful attitude toward production
  • Pollution from noise, dirt and hazardous conditions
  • Understanding of bacterial infections
  • Understanding of chemical composition
  • Greater separation from nature, and processes of production
• Poor child labor law

  
• Increased amount of pollutants

  
• Industrial- medical revolution

  
• 1870 – U.S. Fish Commission Established First wildlife protection agency established by the United States.
• Mid-19th Century

  • Government and private groups tried to protect our resources
  • Forest Preservation Act of 1891 established
  • John Muir & Theodore Roosevelt
  • Congress created the US Forest Service in 1905
  • Congress passed the Antiquities Act in 1906
  • National Park Service created in 1916
• John Muir

  • Founded the Sierra Club
  • Established the preservationist movement
  • Lobbied for the creation of national parks
• Theodore Roosevelt

  • Established wildlife reserves
  • Tripled size of national forests
• 1872 – Yellowstone National Park Established First National Park Established Woodrow Wilson
• George Perkins Marsh

  • Considered to be America’s first environmentalists.
  • One of the first works to document the effects of human action on the environment and helped to launched the modern conservation movement.
  • Marsh argued that deforestation could lead to desertification.
• 1879 – USGS Established
• 1905 - Audubon Society Established
• What Happened Between 1930 and 1960?

  • Civilian Conservation Corps established
  • Depression workers to plant trees, maintain parks, and recreation areas.
  • They also restored silted water ways and built dams for flood control
• 1930 – Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute Established
• 1937 – First Sanitary Landfill

  • Built by Jean Vincenz, the commissioner of public works for Fresno,
  • Built by Jean Vincenz, the commissioner of public works for Fresno, CA
• Charles Elton

  • Author of Animal Ecology
  • First saw the natural world as one community
  • Established ideas of modern population and community ecology,
  • including studies of invasive
  • organisms.
  • Credited with the idea of a “food chain”
• Who Was Aldo Leopold?

  • Fought for large tracks of wilderness and open areas for hunting and fishing
  • Founded the profession of game management
  • Invented the concept of “land ethics”
  • Founder of the Conservation and Environmental Movements
• What Happened During the 1960s?

  • Rachel Carson helps to broaden the concept of resource conservation
  • Beginning of the environmental movement
  • People become aware of the relationships between population growth, resource use, and pollution
  • Congress passes the Wilderness Act in 1964
• 1962 - Rachel Carson publishes Silent Spring. 1. Did most of her original studies and research at Wood’s Hole Oceanographic Institute.

  2. Later published a famous book about the effects of DDT on the

  environment.
• What Happened During the 1970s?

  • First annual Earth Day held in 1970
  • Richard Nixon establishes the Environmental Protection Agency
  • Endangered Species Act established in 1973
  • Bureau of Land Management established in 1978
  • Carter creates the Department of Energy
  • Carter passes the Superfund Act in 1980
• 1970 – NOAA Established

  • Establishment of National Oceanographic and
  • Establishment of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric
  • Establishment of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
• 1970 – Earth Day Established

  1970 - EPA Established
• What Happened During the 1980s?

  • Anti-environmental movement starts by ranchers and leaders of the oil industry
  • Regan increases private energy and mineral development, timber cutting and federal funds for research on energy conservation and renewable energy are cut
  • Wise Use Movement formed which sought to repeal most of the country’s environmental laws