Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson saw an opportunity. The anti-war protests of the 1960s made clear that the public could mobilize en masse around social movements. Simultaneously, a growing consciousness was emerging about how people impact the environment. So, the Democrat Nelson teamed up with a Republican congressperson and hired a young Harvard graduate student to serve as coordinator for a “national teach-in on the environment.” On April 22, 1970, Earth Day was born. The environmental movement began in earnest, elevating the importance of Resources for the Future’s work (begun 17 years earlier) to advance both a healthy environment and economic well-being.
Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, a former US Senator and Wisconsin governor, spoke at the National Press Club on the 33rd anniversary of Earth Day in 2003
In the 50 years since, much has changed. To reflect on the most consequential developments, we at Resources for the Future have crafted a timeline of significant recent environmental milestones. Our relationship with the environment has been shaped by legislative progress and research breakthroughs—along with swings in the regulatory pendulum and devastating disasters. It is a continuing story of researchers, political leaders, activists, the business community, and the public at large responding to changes in our environment and occasionally mobilizing for substantial changes in environmental, energy, and resource policy.
We will publish a full infographic of environmental milestones in the upcoming May issue of Resources magazine; here, we’re sharing a sneak preview. The timeline does not display the full cascade of executive orders, regulatory changes, and subsequent rollbacks that have come with changes in presidential administrations. And while executive regulatory action has become far more common in recent years than significant environmental legislation, some of the milestones here (and the retrospective research that the upcoming issue of Resources magazine will feature) suggest that legislation can and does have a lasting impact.
Timeline of Significant Environmental Milestones
—The 1960s
September 27, 1962: Silent Spring, written by Rachel Carson, helps to mobilize environmentalism through her accounts of chemical pollution in the environment
December 17, 1963: Clean Air Act offers federal research aid and encourages the formation of state control agencies
October 20, 1965: Motor Vehicle Air Pollution Control Act sets in place federal vehicle emissions standards for the first time
September 1967: John Krutilla, an RFF fellow from 1955 to 1988, publishes the seminal journal article “Conservation Reconsidered” in the American Economic Review
November 21, 1967: The Air Quality Control Act expands federal authority to regulate air pollution, setting in place a timetable for states and local agencies to establish air quality standards
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Air Quality Act in November 1967
January 28, 1969: Santa Barbara oil spill becomes the largest in US waters (though now ranks third, after Deepwater Horizon in 2010 and Exxon Valdez in 1989)
June 22, 1969: The Cuyahoga River lights on fire and makes the news
—The 1970s
January 1, 1970: National Environmental Policy Act requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their land management and new construction decisions
A crowd in New York during the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970
April 22, 1970: 20 million Americans—at the time, 10 percent of the total population of the United States—take to the streets during the first Earth Day
December 2, 1970: US Environmental Protection Agency is established
December 31, 1970: Amendments to the Clean Air Act set in place the foundations of air pollution control in the United States today, consolidating enforcement authority in the newly created EPA
October 18, 1972: Clean Water Act safeguards surface waters from pollution
October 1972: Oregon becomes the first US state to enact a statewide beverage container deposit law with the Oregon Bottle Bill, which encourages recycling
October 1973: Oil crisis, during which the price of oil increases from $3 to nearly $12 per barrel
December 27, 1973: Endangered Species Act requires federal agencies to ensure that their activities do not jeopardize endangered or threatened species or their critical habitats
June 28, 1974: CFCs are implicated in the destruction of the earth’s ozone layer when related research is published in the journal Nature
December 16, 1974: Safe Drinking Water Act is set in place to protect drinking water quality
May 1975: RFF's Marion Clawson publishes Forests for Whom and for What?, a book that elevates the profile of forestry issues and helps kickstart future research into forest economics
December 1975: Human population reaches four billion
October 21, 1976: Resource Conservation and Recovery Act directs EPA to protect people and the environment from hazardous wastes
July 21, 1977: First oil delivered to the newly constructed Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in the amount of 412,000 barrels of light sweet crude
January 1979: Second oil crisis, during which the price of oil increases to nearly $40 per barrel
A line at a gas station in Maryland during the 1979 oil crisis
March 28, 1979: Three-Mile Island nuclear accident
July 23, 1979: Charney Report is published as the first comprehensive scientific report on the relationship between CO₂ and climate change
—The 1980s
December 11, 1980: Superfund Act cleans up heavily polluted areas
December 1980: Woodbury, New Jersey, becomes the first US city to create a curbside recycling program
June 1, 1981: RFF develops the “water quality ladder,” an intuitive ten-point scale that describes willingness-to-pay for water quality and can be easily understood by the general public
September 1982: Warren County PCB Landfill is created, cited by some as the spark that leads to the modern environmental justice movement
June 1983: Study shows that average blood lead levels in the United States have fallen by 37 percent between 1976 and 1980
December 2, 1984: Bhopal disaster becomes world's worst industrial disaster in India
April 26, 1986: Accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Soviet Ukraine
May 22, 1987: Garbage barge Mobro 4000 is forced to return to New York after being denied harbor by numerous port cities in the Gulf of Mexico
September 16, 1987: Montreal Protocol restricts chemicals that damage the ozone layer
July 1987: Human population reaches five billion
November 1988: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is established
March 24, 1989: Exxon Valdez runs aground and spills more than 10 million gallons of crude oil
—The 1990s
July 1990: First report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
President George H.W. Bush signs the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments
November 15, 1990: Further amendments to the Clean Air Act—the last transformative piece of US environmental legislation passed—pave the way for cap-and-trade programs that have reduced pollution such as acid rain
July 3, 1992: Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which aims to create globally unified climate policy
October 24, 1992: Energy Policy Act of 1992 incentivizes clean and renewable energy, along with energy efficiency and conservation
January 1, 1996: Leaded gasoline is banned from use in most new vehicles in the United States
December 11, 1996: Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty, operationalizes the UNFCCC’s goal of limiting and reducing greenhouse gas emissions
April 23, 1998: Controversial hockey stick graph is published in the journal Nature
October 1999: Human population reaches six billion
—The 2000s
January 1, 2000: European Union bans leaded gasoline as a public health hazard
January 12, 2001: Roadless Rule prohibits road construction and deforestation on millions of acres of National Forest System land
August 2002: Research in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds 11,700 fewer carbon monoxide–related deaths due to emissions declines under the Clean Air Act
Air pollution levels in the United States have declined in the decades since the Clean Air Act passed
January 2005: Launch of the emissions trading system in the European Union
July 11, 2005: The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment incorporates the work of experts around the world to evaluate global ecosystems and their contribution to human well-being
August 8, 2005: Energy Policy Act of 2005 promotes the construction of nuclear reactors in the United States
August 23, 2005: Hurricane Katrina decimates the Gulf Coast and kills more than 1,800
June 2006: China overtakes the United States as the highest emitter of CO₂ in the world
September 27, 2006: Emissions trading system launches in California
April 2, 2007: Massachusetts v. EPA Supreme Court case rules that EPA is required to regulate greenhouse gases by the Clean Air Act
Twelve states brought suit against the EPA to force the agency to regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants. Here, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly addresses reporters outside the US Supreme Court
October 12, 2007: Nobel Peace Prize awarded for efforts to share knowledge about human-induced climate change
December 19, 2007: Energy Independence and Security Act significantly raises efficiency standards for cars and appliances
December 2007: US atmospheric SO₂ emissions declined to 50 percent of 1990 levels
December 2007: Shale gas reaches 5 percent of US production using fracking and other energy-extraction methods, which later leads to an oil boom
August 5, 2008: Emissions trading exchanges establish in Beijing and Shanghai, China, on the same day and within hours of each other
January 1, 2009: The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative launches in seven US states
June 2009: The Waxman-Markey Bill, a proposal to curb greenhouse gases, fails to pass in Congress
December 7, 2009: Copenhagen Summit (COP15) inspires hope for climate action that ultimately does not materialize, except for an agreement to limit global warming to 2°C
—The 2010s
April 20, 2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill leaks 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico; a national commission tasks RFF with investigating the spill and recommending steps to improve the safety of oil-drilling operations
March 11, 2011: Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster
December 2011: Human population reaches seven billion
October 2012: Hurricane Sandy kills more than 200 and causes $70 billion of damage on US East Coast
December 2012: US atmospheric SO₂ emissions decline to 25 percent of 1990 levels
May 6, 2015: Atmospheric CO₂ globally exceeds 400 ppm for the first time on record
December 12, 2015: United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP21) meets in Paris and becomes the high-water mark for ambitious climate policy
April 22, 2016: Paris Agreement adopted by 195 signatories aims to limit temperature increase in this century to 2°C
April 2017: Sunrise Movement founded as a youth-led political movement that advocates for political action to mitigate climate change
October 2017: The Clean Power Plan, which aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electrical power generation, is repealed; RFF research later finds its replacement—the Affordable Clean Energy Rule—could result in emissions increases in more than 16 US states
November 2018: Worst wildfire season ever recorded for California
The Camp Fire in November 2018 devastated towns like Paradise, California
February 7, 2019: Green New Deal congressional resolution is introduced, calling for rapid decreases in US greenhouse gas emissions
December 2019: Shale gas reaches 75 percent of US production using fracking and other energy-extraction methods
—The 2020s
February 27, 2020: American Energy Innovation Act is introduced
March 2020: Saudi-Russian oil price war in response to the Coronavirus pandemic sees oil prices fall dramatically, falling below zero for the first time in history in April
A version of this article appeared in print in the May 2020 issue of Resources magazine.
