douglas brinkley silent spring revolution

Brinkley records these milestones of the modern environmental movement through the first Earth Day in 1970, after which every American life would forever be touched by the environmental movement of the Long Sixties (1960–1973). JFK had been jolted by Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962. Depicting the deathblow that could be dealt by artificial chemicals, specifically DDT, the book launched an eco-revolution among the American people, which went on to inspire landmark legislation during Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s presidencies. Kennedy to use the federal government to punish chemical polluters, save seashore habitats, and regulate the use of toxic pesticides. Kennedy, who insisted on the protection of the earth and public health, pushed John F.

Environmental justice warriors like Barry Commoner, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Nader, Cesar Chavez, and Robert F. By the 1960s, though, the problem of environmental degradation had grown much bigger. Douglas (Supreme Court Justice) and others who fought for roadless public lands, wilderness preserves, and new national parks. In Silent Spring Revolution, Douglas Brinkley pays tribute to those who combated the mauling of the natural world in the Kennedy era, a group of environmental activists consisting of David Brower (Sierra Club), Stewart Udall (Secretary of the Interior), William O. Very few people cared, in part because pollution was typically diverted to the poorest neighborhoods. But the Cold War era’s prosperity came at a high cost: oceans began to die, wilderness vanished, DDT poisoned ecosystems, species went extinct, and smog made breathing difficult in cities. They were dominators and their hubris pervaded the post-World War II economic boom under Presidents Truman and Eisenhower, as America became the world’s leading hyper-industrial and military giant. With the detonation of an atomic bomb in the New Mexico desert in 1945, humans took control of the earth for the first time. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon. New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties, telling a highly charged story of an indomitable generation that quite literally saved the natural world under the leadership of John F.

Douglas brinkley silent spring revolution