The 10 years around 1970 were a time of tremendous change--what caused that?
The 1960s were a cultural revolution
- standing up for what is
right--civil rights movement
- less conformity
- rebellion against
conformity and the old values
- Americans became very
individualistic (this lasted, not so much the rebellion)
- felt they had the right to do whatever they pleased
- introduction of birth
control pill contributed to change in values
Woodstock 1969
- economic progress is partly
caused by new technologies
- people began to question whether economic progress is the only important thing
- is having more things, more
wealth, the most important thing in life?
- do you want economic growth even at the cost of changing the character of the town?
- a large minority were
willing to choose quality of life over maximum economic growth
- a few radicals were against
technology, some even chose a simpler life
- a lot of people wanted to protect quality of life even if it meant limiting growth at times
- efficiency was no longer the key
goal--quality of life mattered too
- pesticides were a great success story
- Agricultural Aviation
in 1955
- would it be a good thing to make mosquitoes extinct?
- harm was not so much to human beings as to birds
- the bald eagle nearly went extinct because DDT made its egg shells fragile
- brief
video biography
- Rachel Carson wrote a popular book about the danger of DDT to birds: Silent Spring, 1962
- galvanized public opinion
- the public didn't just care about harm to human beings
- many ordinary citizens came to
believe we need to change course
- DDT manufacturers and users were outraged
Paul Ehrlich, The Population Bomb
- Robert
Malthus
- Malthusian argument--population increases until resources run out
- can technology prevent that
from happening? people in the 1950 thought it could
- improved medicine and
sanitation lead to faster population growth
- Americans use more than our share of resources
- argument whether birth control was the answer--birth control pill came into use in 1960s
- the people most concerned
about the population explosion wanted to spread the use of birth
control and sterilization
- Green Revolution--science and technology, such as improved crops, will allow us to keep up?
- mostly a world issue,
population was growing fastest in poorer countries
- by the 1980s population
growth in rich countries was slowing down: why?
- easier availability of birth control
- people no longer depended on their children to support them when they were old
- with increased need for education it was better to have fewer children and spend more on raising each one
- in some countries population growth rate fell below replacement (less than 2.1 children per woman)
- it was another place where
people gave up the idea that growth is always good
- resources held in
common--eg. fish in the sea--are overused because it isn't in the
interest of the individual users to conserve the resource (because
someone else will just take more)
- there are classes of problems for which no technological solution exists
- we need more regulation (to give up some freedom) to live fairly in more crowded conditions
- people in the 1960s took
the problem fairly seriously
- consider the example of should we have cars which use less gas
- if this would serve the
common good how do you achieve it?
- regulation?
- individual choice?
- back to nature
- some of the toughest
questions were put aside
- billboards and
highway
beautification--see story on
modern issues
- improving urban life--parks and gardens
- new concerns about pollution
- challenge to synthetic detergents
- accident at an offshore oil
well blackened 30 miles of beach in 1969
- people didn't see their behavoir (eg. automobiles) as contributing to the problem
- at first people assumed there would be technological solutions to these problems
progress must be tempered with a new ethic of responsibility
