"Within two decades of the end of World War II, nearly everything about American life had been altered." (p. 7)
"Americans wanted more, and they wanted it faster"

How completely new was the dramatic change in public opinion on environmental issues in the 1960s?

• it was in some ways a continuation of the conservation movement
• increase in role of government
• concerns about pollution and environmental degradation were growing even before 1960
  
• in other ways it was radically new
  

Progressive Movement and pre-WWII conservation

• the Sierra Club was founded in 1892 by Muir but also by important people like the president of Stanford University
  
• the Progressive Era (early 20th century) was a time of reform--cleaning up corruption and dirty cities
• big cities had become corrupt places, there were no laws to protect people injured on the job or to protect consumers from dangerous products
  
• people began to believe that the government should take responsibility for protecting the weak
• settlement house movement--community groups trying to help the poor, Mary McDowell
  
• early history of regulation
• The traditional belief was that ordinary people could and should watch out for themselves (buyer beware), but as consumer goods came to be made far away instead of locally and technology became more complex that didn't work so well any more.
• employees had no right to compensation for accidents from their employers because of a legal principle called "fellow servant"
• The progressive movement around 1900 led to the first regulations.  Anti-trust regulations around 1900 and the Pure Food and Drug Act (1906).  Workers compensation started in the 1910s.
• so that is how government regulation started
  
• Progressives wanted to replace corruption with efficiency and professionalism--not just help the poor but use social science to find out the best way to do so
• experts know best (an idea that has been slowly declining since the late 1970s)
• 
• they tended to think they knew what was best for everyone else
• the conservation movement in the first half of the 20th century was tied in with the Progressive movement
• emphasis on letting the experts decide
• relatively small group of people who wanted to make things better
• protecting special places and animals
  

• Cities were growing very fast.  Between 1870 and 1920 New York City expanded from less than a million to 5 1/2 million population.  Density increased in the center city with the invention of the elevator and steel frame construction.
• New York grew larger in size as well--from 22 to almost 300 square miles. 
• Urban services--particularly handling garbage and sewage and providing water--had a hard time keeping up.   The progressives planned new expanded systems.
  
• The first suburban explosion resulted from streetcars.  People lived in row houses (townhouses) within walking distance of a trolley stop

• The Progressives invented urban planning.  By about 1910 they had the ideas of a central business district, zoning, a system of parks and parkways, and planning roads to allow circulation--including the first limited access highways.  These plans were very successful--the value of central property went up and therefore the tax base.
• Automobile based suburbs were growing even before WWII
• What did middle class people want?--safety, uniformity, yards, etc.
• The automobile corresponded with American values on independence and privacy.
• To get this people were willing to move further and further out.  In the 1920s Los Angeles opened 3200 subdivisions

After World War II there was another step:

• prosperity--many new technologies (such as TV) and people were rich enough to buy them (partly because the GI bill allowed many soldiers to go to college)
  
• huge growth in suburbs and a high value put on family life and where you lived--people increasingly wanted their own home with a yard
  
• After the war many returning soldiers married and started families and wanted to own a home--new suburbs were built even more rapidly
  
  • Farmland became housing developments
    
  • Planned towns-- Levittowns (first in 1949).  Only in 1960s were proposals for cluster zoning to leave open space successful.
  • Identical houses could be built rapidly from standardized parts
    
  • The attached garage replaced the front porch, and large lots allowed space-wasting one story ranch houses.
  • Suburbs were very segregated, not just by race but by income level and often ethnicity (red-lining), also further separated the world of men and women.
  • people who wanted suburban life believed that they had a right to quality of life--that is what they expected to find in suburbs
  • suburbs caused some enviromental problems such as automobile pollution
    

 Traffic in Los Angeles, 1949

Environmental impact of postwar prosperity:

• by the late 1950s there began to be questioning of the suburban dream--you could have a nice house and life somehow still seemed empty
• people moved to the suburbs to have nature around them and that was disappearing
  
• for the first time there began to be a shortage of wood as so many new wooden homes were built (led to more cutting in National Forests)
  
• many more people commuting by car (plus goods transported by truck) meant increased demand for fuel
• whole new cities had grown up around wartime manufacturing
• prewar approaches to pollution by simply diluting it (eg. by dumping it in a river) didn't work as well any more
• the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught fire

Gasoline ( petroleum history sites )

• People first thought the auomobile would clean up the city--compared to horse manure and dead horses
  
• Automobile created a whole new industry to provide fuel.  Automobiles run on gasoline, a relatively light fraction of crude oil.  Diesel fuel (which is essentially the same as home heating oil) is a relatively heavy fraction.
• The heaviest fractions (bitumen or rock asphalt) had been used for centuries for waterproofing and after 1800 for roads.  Kerosene was used in lamps from the 1850s.
• In 1859 an American industrialist, George H. Bissell began a deliberate search for oil.  They chose a site in Pennsylvania, drilled through 70 feet of bedrock, and used the oil from the well for illuminating gas, lubricating oil, and an excellent lamp oil.   Within 15 years production in the Pennsylvania field had reached 10 million (360 lb) barrels a year.
• John D. Rockefeller established Standard Oil in 1870.  By building a pipeline system he soon gained control of 90% of a rapidly-growing industry and became for a while the richest person in the world.

Beginnings of the Petroleum Industry

• The oil was distilled to separate the fractions--first gasoline (1.5 to 15 percent, depending on the crude), which at first was a nuisance because it was highly inflammable and had no use, then kerosene, and then lubricating oil.   For a good explanation of refining see Modern Refining.
• With the popularity of the automobile suddenly gasoline was in greater demand than the other fractions, and cracking was invented by William Burton at Standard Oil in 1913.  Heavier fractions are converted into lighter ones by subjecting them to high temperature and pressure to break down the chains of carbon atoms into shorter ones.  Industrial research labs competed to find more efficient ways of doing this, most important catalytic cracking with a platinum catalyst in the 1920s.
• problem of engine knock arose just before WWI as refineries tried to widen the cut.  Solved by the 1922 introduction of tetraethyl lead as a fuel additive.  To prevent lead from fouling the engine ethylene dibromide was added to react with the lead residue and make sure it was funneled out of the exhaust system into the atmosphere (at the time the only questions raised were about hazards of the lead to refinery workers).
• why didn't they think this was dangerous--because the hazardous material would be diluted by the atmosphere
  
• Industry fought evidence of the health hazards of lead
  
• leaded gasoline was phased out starting in the 1970s because the lead that got into the atmosphere and fell into the soil in heavily traveled areas was identified as a significant cause of lead poisoning.

People began to realize that pollution was hurting them.

The new Conservation

• a new emphasis on wilderness
• organizations like the Sierra Club and the Wilderness society only slowly became willing to fight, to play confrontational politics

It wasn't easy to challenge established institutions

• the Forest Service was too much influenced by the companies that cut timber in National Forests
• the Park Service was in the tourist business
• the Bureau of Reclamation was in the dam building business
• those dams provided the water for the growth of cities like Los Angeles and Phoenix

Efficiency was still the dominant value

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