5 Milestones of the Environmental Movement

1. The first Earth Day was observed on April 22, 1970. It was celebrated by over 20 million people. Here is Walter Cronkite reporting on the first Earth Day. Shortly afterward, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was born.

2. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT in 1972. The chemical had been deemed “so safe you can eat it” in this 1947 video that reported on an epidemic of malaria in north-west Kenya. Watch here:

3. Congress creates the Superfund program in 1980, designed to clean up toxic waste sites. 

4. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth is released in 2006, winning the former Vice President an Oscar and Nobel Prize. Watch it here. 

5. The bald eagle is finally removed from the endangered species list in 2007. Read more here. 

In the video below, James Lawrence Powell, the former President of Reed College, and author of The Inquisition of Climate Science, answers the question “What did Grandpa do?” on Earth Day. 

Watch the video here:

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