During the 1960’s, the public opinion began to shift when it came to water and air pollution because of the impacts these things were having on humans and our ecosystems. In the 1960s, an environmental movement began to emerge that hoped to lessen pollutants flowing into the planet’s ecosystems. Out of this movement came events like Earth Day, and legislative victories like the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (1972). We release a variety of chemicals into the atmosphere when we burn the fossil fuels we use every day. Breathing polluted air puts you at a higher risk for asthma and other respiratory diseases. We breathe air to live and what we breathe has a direct impact on our health. Water Pollution Effects Just like the air we breathe, water is vital to our survival. We need clean water to drink, to irrigate our crops and the fish we eat live in the waters. Water polluted by chemicals such as heavy metals, lead, pesticides and hydrocarbon can cause hormonal and reproductive problems, damage to the nervous system, liver and kidney damage and cancer. Out of this movement came events like Earth Day, and legislative victories like the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Clean Water Act (1972). Both of these acts were successful because they helped reduce pollutants from both going in the air as well as going into the water. These acts also helped bring more attention to these issues that were coming to be.
Part l:Chapter 3
The case of the Love Canal case in New York in the 1970’s was one that went national due to all of the harm it brought. In the Love Canal case, both government and business officials were to blame. The business officials were aware that the materials they were dumping were dangerous to human health, but to them the site was ideal. However, the government knew this was happening and did nothing to help prevent nor stop this from happening. Furthermore, the company’s dumping practices were legally acceptable at the time and the government could have overuled that. The case went national because the local officals continued to ignore what was happening or tried to keep it on the low. The Love Canal became huge because throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, individual residents complained to the municipal government about odors and odd afflictions, including rashes and respiratory problems, as well as oily black substances in basements and exposed, rushing barrels in fields nd their homes. Members of crews building streets in the area complained of itchy skin and blisters. There were even reports that four children had been burned by debris on their former property, but the company did not publicize the presence of the chemicals even after this event, probably because it feared liability. Due to this case, CERCLA also known as Superfund was created. The superfund financed primarily by a tax on petrochemica feed stocks, organic chemicals, and crude oil imports. The act also authorized the EPA to respond to the hazardous substance emergencies and clean up leaking dumpsites if the the responsible parties failed to take appropiriate action or failed to be located.
Part ll:Chapter 9
In the winter of 1963, Yellowstone National Park allowed the first snow-mobiles to be allowed to enter the park. By the mid-1990’s, the national park service was reporting the winter time air quality in some parts of the park was the worst in the nation and that the drone of the snowmobiles was perpetually audible at Old Faithful, the park’s premiere attraction. In 2000, after five years of studying the issue, the Clinton administration decided to phase in on a ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and most other national parks on the grounds that allowing them was incosistent with the park management. Yellowstone National Park is famous for its geysers and hot springs. The world's most famous geyser, the Old Faithful Geyser, is in Yellowstone National Park. It is also the home to grizzly bears, wolves, bison and elk. The issue rearding Yellowstone however was the question, is this park a playground or a shrine for nature. Both sides of the environmentalists and snowmobiles claim to appreciate the amenities nature has to provide such as wildlife, scenic beauty, and open space, but their values are actually quite different. There is passive and motorized recreation. Motorized recreation is more about having playgrounds while passive recreation is more about nature and about ensuring nature’s flora and fauna. So the whole issue had to do with what kind of recreation this park is because snowmobiles changed how the park was seen since it was taking out some of the nature aspects.
Part lll:Chapter 16
Hurricane Katrina took place in Southern Louisiana and other states in 2006. New Orleans originally occupied a crescent of high ground between the Mississippi River and the brackish, 630 square mile Lake Pontchartrain. Hurricane Katrina made had ferocious winds and torrential rainfall. New Orleans continued to be flooded with constant rising water. Those who had not evacuated were trapped in attics or on their roofs, huddled in the superdome, or massed on highway overpasses waiting for busses to take them to permanent shelters. What also hit were the entrenched poverty and racial disparities that had long bedeviled New Orleans. Even though the hurricane hit everyone in the area, the vast majority of the residents hit the hardest were poor and African American. Those same people were least able to evacauate, the last to be allowed back into the city to inspect the damage and retrieve their belongings, and the last well equipped to rebuild. So despite the warnings and planning exercises, New Orleans was woefully underprepared for Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath. More analyes revealed that shoddy engineering beforehand and poor coordination among federal, state, and local governments after the fact tranformed a severe storm into a distaster. Meanwhile, local officials struggled to plan the monument al task of rebuilding, a process that was fraught with racial and economic tensions. Hurricane Katrina resulted in 1,464 Louisiana deaths, with at least 135 people cnfirmed missing. Total Katrina damage resulted to exceed more than $81 billion as well as economic losses assoiated with the storm resulting as high as $200 billion, making this the most expensive natural disaster to occur in U.S history.
Chapter 17
The status quo continues to persist in environmental policy. The strength of the status quo maifests itself repeatedly in cases revolving natural resources because environmentalists have faced enormous resistance to reforms simed at introducing their values into management practices. It also means not only institutionalized interests have an advantage in policy debates but also that policies tend to lag behind advances in the scientific understanding of the natural world. Coalitions are important when it comes to addressing environmental concerns proponents of fundamental policy change must assemble a broad supporting alliance. Direct discussions of competing values are rare, partly because its adversaries caricature environmentalism as an effort by elites to impose their values on society, public opinion polls suggest that most Americans sympathize with the general aims of the environmental movement. These values translate into other core values such as freedom, national security, or economic growth. This dynamic may suggest that the prospects for genuine change in our approach to environmental protection are poor. However, an alternative interpretation of events is possible: efforts for the West to find common ground among ranchers and local environmentalists suggest that, at least under some circumstances, concern about the future of a particular place may bring mutal distrust, and practical agreements may emerge even in the face of underlying value difference.