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An Essay on the Principle of Population
By Thomas Robert Malthus. A precurser to Moore's text of 1954 which questions the availability of resources to a growing population. Malthus argued that resources increase arithmetically and that population increases geometrically. Human populations therefore constantly tend to press against limits of environment indicating a complicated pattern: exponential population growth came from falling mortality, only stopped by comparable fall in birth rates (the "demographic transition"). -
Mt. Auburn Cemetery
Jacob Bigelow organized this cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts as a rural retreat in the city and a place for the contemplation of death & nature. Pointing towards the future of city parks, arboretums, and suburbs (cf Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison). -
John Muir Born
In Scotland and grew up in WI -
Theory & Practice of Landscape Architecture published
By Andrew Jackson Downing (1815-1852) -
Anna Botsford Comstock Born
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Central Park constructed
In New York City ,designed by Frederic Law Olmstead. With the goal of bringing rural picturesque to the city. Curvilinear organic patterns in opposition to civil grid, with Mt. Auburn & Downing as models. -
Ernest Thompson Setonborn Born
In England -
Man and Nature Published
By George Perkins Marsh. He describes deforestation as disastrous human impact on nature, erosion, and watershed deterioration. (One of the first texts suggesting the power of the affects that people can have on nature) -
US gives Yosemite to CA
As a state park at prompting of Frederick Law Olmsted. It was returned to the US in 1906. -
Gifford Pinchot Born
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John Muir goes to Yosemite
Begins to write about the Sierra Nevada for "Overland Monthly" -
Riverside, IL
City plan/suburb designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. -
Washburn-Langford-Doane expedition to Yellowstone
It was Cornelius Hedges' idea to set aside "a great National Park," he and Nathaniel P. Langford lobby extensively in Washington.
With aid from a report of Ferdinand Hayden expedition in 1871, illustrated by Thomas Moran and William Henry Jackson (artist and photographer as promoters of image of romantic park especially in Congress)
Yosemite and Yellowstone landscapes as the new Niagara-- a place to prevent privatization -
Yellowstone National Park
Grant signs a bill making Yellowstone our nation's first National Park.
Reinforces the idea that the "natural wonder" is America's best alternative to European culture: the Edenic landscape of God's creation, the romantic sublime, the necessary tourist stop.
Runte's "worthless lands" thesis: strongest argument for parks was no other good use. -
Botany for High Schools & Colleges
Authored by Charles Bessey as a classic botany text. Bessey rejected Nature-Study ideas in favor of serious,hard science. HE attracted a star group of students t ohim at the University of Nebraska. Bessey opposed to non-laboratory botany as non-rigorous and too much like natural history.
Clements & others attracted to relations among plant species, hence left lab to study plant communities, but applied rigorous Bessey's scientific techniques to work. -
Aldo Leopold born
Aldo Leopold eventually emerged as the major theoretician of wilderness in first half of 20th century.
In the 1920s , the"disaster" of deer overpopulation on Kaibab Plateau lead Leopold to reverse position on predators, and to argue against eliminating them. Data was very problematic, however.
Leopold argued that people should be "Thinking Like a Mountain"--that wolves as well as deer are essential to the health of an ecological community, in order to prevent overpopulation. -
Sierra Club Formed
By John Muir -
Adirondack State Park formed
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Columbian Exposition
One of the earliest planning efforts in urban areas. -
Island Garden Published
By Celia Thaxter on Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire. Proliferates the idea of the garden as expression of woman's role as nurturer of young life, flower as symbol of fertility and feminine beauty, and the garden as direct sign of God's love for birth, growth, and death. -
Botsford becomes involved in 'Nature Study'
Nature study is romantic, sentimental, and embraced the natural world and its creatures as anthropomorphic vehicle for exploration of human values: fables, moral lessons. -
Wild Animals I Have Known published
By Ernest Thompson Seton. Writes stories of noble wolves & other animals struggling against odds, dying. -
Alexandre Hogue Born
Hogue became an important regionalist/realist painter in late 1930s. He painted the Great Plains and desert SW chiefly, using religious symbolism of crucified land. -
Garden of a Commuter's Wife Published
By Mabel Osgood Wright. Writes as a bird-watcher and conservationist gardener--new styles of gardening become popular, including a secluded "wild" sort of design for contemplation. Marks a dramatic shift in late 19th c from High Victorian gardening fashion‑-massed beds of single-color annual plants in parterres‑-toward rustic, perennial plantings promoted by William Robinson & Gertrude Jekyll. These ideas spread to the US and still dominate. -
Period: to
Pinchot in Office
Alliance with Roosevelt: Forest acrage grows 51 -175 million -
Reclamation Act
Francis G. Newlands' act for federal irrigation in support of homestead family farms, revolving fund by farm payments. -
Woodcraft Indians Formed
By Ernest Thompson Seton. Seton's child Indians used as a fantasy to occupy a lost American landscape, but also to encounter a natural world whose meanings are a higher source of moral value in modern society.
They preach values of conservation: preserving the world being lost, whether for wildness or to save a child's moral universe.
And the values of progressive conservation: Nature as a resource, a sublime cathedral, a Sunday School, a home. -
The Conquest of Arid America
William Ellsworth Smythe writes the most important tract promoting government support of irrigation. -
Research Methods in Ecology Published
by Frederic Edward Clements. This text romoted transect, bisect (roots), and quadrat to map co-occurrence of species and led to a more quantitative approach to ecological research.
Clements argued that essential ecological unit of vegetation was formation: a super-organism with an identity apart from individual species comprising it, with genuine life cycle of its own, passing through regular phases toward maturity or climax. Super-organism actually a very problematic concept. -
Rachel Carson Born
Her mother raised her to love nature, music, books, writing, Carson studied biology in PA College for Women. She got a BA and MA at Johns Hopkins, then worked with Bureau of Fisheries.
Her marginal status as a female scientist limited research, but encouraged popular translation. -
Boy Scouts of England Formed
Based on Ernest Thompson Seton's 'Woodcraft Indians' -
Chicago Worlds Fair
Planning effort based on the Colmubian exposition 15 years earlier. One of the best examples of planning in Urban Areas. An effort to rationalize urban landscape. -
The Fight for Conservation Published
By Gifford Pinchot, which was a key progressive-era tract: "greatest god for greatest number for longest time" -
Boy Scouts of America formed
Combo between Seton's Indians, military values. -
Handbook of Nature Study Published
By Anna Botsford Comstock. This book remains in print as a classic nature study work. It also represents another domesticated strand of romantic sublime: secularization of religious values, nature as best context for educating children to cultural values. -
Girl Scouts of America Formed
by Juliette Low. The Girl Scouts emphasized more domestic and "feminine" values: home-making, group vs. individual achievement; nature as field for nurture and communal support rather than competition. -
Hetch Hetchy Valley Dam goes in
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Tourist Automobile reaches Yellowstone
"See America First" was a promotional tool linked visiting National Parks with a national identity arrival of the automobile. It liberated travelers from RR & hotels: bringing the onset of camping, more highway-oriented mode of travel both to and around parks, and signals a shift in who visits. -
National Defense Act
Nitrate plant built at Muscle Shoals. Makes the powerful linkage of hydroelectricity with energy-intensive industry (nitrates, aluminum, nuclear), and hence with military expenditures during wartime. Nitrate boosted in South as fertilizer and power source for urban-industrial development, with Feds providing capital. -
Trappers Lake Set Aside
Arthur C. Carhart hired by Denver headquarters to plan vacation development at Trappers Lake but was so stunned by the beauty he argued that no development at all would be better. -
Proposal of Appalachian Trail
Benton MacKaye's proposal led to massive volunteer efforts, to the Appalachian Trail Conference in 1925, and to the completion of the trail by 1937, much of it over private land. -
Izaak Walton League
This group would eventually play a central role in national refuge system. -
Wilson Dam Completed
On the Tennessee River. Muscle Shoals controversy of 1920s: public vs private power; local development in northern Alabama vs wider power source; regional planning vs particularistic development. -
Meat and Veggie Freezing Technologies
Clarence Birdseye (1886-1956) tries quick freezing of fish in 1923, and is able to freeze meat and vegetables by 1928. He founds General Foods Co., and begins making frozen food widely available by 1930s.
Soon, assembly line factory assembly of food replaced home cooking (TV dinner as metaphor): parallels increasing participation of women in workforce -
Regional Plan of New York and its Environs
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Civillian Conservation Corps Created
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Game Management Published
Written by Aldo Leopold. This classic textbook systematized state efforts at regulating hunt via game wardens, license fees, wildlife refuges, raising of pheasants, etc.
Leopold went on to become Professor of Wildlife Ecology at University of Wisconsin, first such position in country; -
Proctor & Gamble's "Dreft" Released
This enabled home laundry to be done with new phosphate detergents--dramatically increased phosphate content of sewage and lakes.
A contributor to the "death" of Lake Erie
Note that the apocalyptic portraits of Lake Erie in 1960s didn't come true: shifts in detergents and sewage treatment slowed many eutrophication processes; although pollution by toxics and heavy metals continues, early prophecies proved considerably exaggerated. -
Tennessee Valley Authority Act
Creates TVA with the goal of region-wide planning. The original constitutional basis for Federal water acts‑-navigation, flood control‑-now broadened to include hydropower development regionwide, but also social planning. -
First Federal Duck Stamp
The stamp finances federal game refuge system and land acquisition. Note also that wetlands for the first time start to preserved, even though not "sublime" in original romantic sense--still valuable. -
Black Wednesday
Ushers in the official beginning of the dust bowl. -
Period: to
Dust Bowl
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Leopold family acquires "The Shack"
They sought to restore this worn-out farm in Sauk County. The story of these efforts are contained in posthumous Sand County Almanac (1949), along with defense of "land ethic."
It was an exercise in the private stewardship of an ecosystem, and the manipulation of abandoned agricultural land to reproduce healthy biota, native vegetation, and a mixture of game and non-game species.
Views humans as members of biotic community with ethical responsibility to maintain its health. -
Wilderness Society Formed
By Bob Marshall, Benton MacKaye, and Aldo Leopold joined Harvey Broome, Bernard Frank, and Robert Sterling Yard to form this society. An example of the elite, wealthy, and well-connnected being very effective in protecting wild land -
Boulder Dam Constructed
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Undersea Published
By Rachel Carson, first popular nature writing, "Undersea" in Atlantic Monthly, which led her to write the book Under the Sea-Wind in 1941--she then shifted toward full-time govt conservation editing -
World Minerals and World Peace Report
Published by Brookings Institution.
"A modern war cannot be fought without tremendous quantities of a few minerals..." -
DDT Approved for Public Use by FDA
During WWII, DDT was applied to typhus epidemic in occupied Naples to de-louse GIs, then to malaria control in tropics. Seemed to be a miracle discovery of new aromatic hydrocarbon.
Its broad-gauge attack on insects, low acute toxicity for humans despite accumulation in milk and fatty tissues meant that it seemed perfect for people to use it in a widespread way. -
Trinity Bomb
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Hiroshima
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Nagasaki
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America's Needs and Resources Published
By Twentieth Century Fund. An example of coordination of resource access essential to stability of post-war world. -
Our Plundered Planet and The Road to Survival
By Fairfield Osborn and William Vogt respectively. Both are best sellers: human beings now threatened own survival.
The bomb taught conservationists to think globally, pointing toward environmentalism.
Vogt's argument: rising human population increasingly impinging on global resources -
Aldo Leopold dies
Of a heart attack in brush fire. -
The Sea Around Us Published
By Rachel Carson. It becomes a world-wide best-seller and freed Carson financially so that she could write about and do what she pleassseedd -
The Population Bomb Pamphlets Published
The pamphlet was funded by Hugh Moore, the inventor & president of Dixie Cup, who acted as a major funder for publications promoting population control for next 20 years. This was a wave of neo-Malthusianism: it showed nuclear weapons as the best available metaphor for apocalyptic population growth. -
"Help Your child to Wonder" published
By Rachel Carson--a portrait of nature study values for her nephew Roger poed the idea that children should be raised within the moral universe of nature.
Nature study would now be politicized, applied to chemical form of fallout/cancer. -
Voluntary Test Ban
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Birth Control Pull released
on US market in 1960 after Margaret Sanger convinced Katherine Dexter McCormick to underwrite $2+ million development funds for birth control pill. Sanger published Birth Control Review and founded Planned Parenthood.
Birth control was at the center of the population controversy, along w/ much conflict w/ Catholic Church.
Fear of a potential racist underside to population control: Eugenics protects white races from dark. -
Silent Sprisng Published
By Rachel Carson. Shows the image of nature devastated by white powder of a different sort of fallout. The use of chemical pesticides, the fear of cancer and the bomb come together. Also,
- tendency of DDT and other chemicals to concentrate in food chains, putting highest levels of food pyramid at risk:.
-pesticides not even effective in object. insects R-selected species, reproducing so quickly that gene pool quickly accommodated new toxic environment -
Testing recommences
After Voluntary Test Ban -
Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty
After an increasied public anxiety about potential health effects despite AEC and govt assurances it is revealed that disease from radiation is not limited to victims of direct atomic attacks: persistence of isotopes. The fear of chemicals like Strontium 90 which accumulate in soil then in milk and can affect child bones, leads to the banning of above ground testing.
Marks not only a fear of the unseeable evil, but also the beginning of an era of mistrust of gov't and experts. -
Torrey Canyon Tanker Disaster
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Whole Earth Catalog Published
by Stewart Brand. Slogan says: "We are as gods and might as well get good at it" -
"Tragedy of the Commons" published
By Garrett Hardin. This is looking again at the problem of shared resources. Should environmental solutions rely on voluntarism? Instead a state could use coercive power to force action.
If people don't put bricks in toilets on their own, we should pass a law requiring them to do so. But that begs the question of the kinds of bricks and the kinds of toilets. Who should pay? Tax rebates or government subsidies? Unfunded mandates? A new set of questions enter policy arena. -
The Population Bomb Book Published
By Paul R. Ehrlich. Poses population as the central environmental problem, and suggests Malthusian triage as the solution-- cut off aid to the poor -
Santa Barbara Oil Spill
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First Earth Day
In September 1969, Sen. Gaylord Nelson (D, WI) proposes day of national reflection on the environmental crisis. Widespread activism and media attention
This includes declarations of crisis, calls for new spiritual vision, and practical suggestions: returnable bottles, fight pollution, preserve open space, put bricks in toilets. -
EPA ban on DDT
