Environmentalism.

Environmentalism was a new concern for the ecology of the human habitat, a social trend derived from the space program, the energy crisis, scientific warnings about pollution and a future shortage of natural resources, the counterculture's back-to-the- earth movement; and the new interests in health, nature, Asian religion, and human-potential movements.

Response.

Congress reacted to new public pressures, and in 1970 President Nixon signed the National Environmental Policy Act, which required government agencies to assess the environmental impact of public projects and to protect endangered species. Nixon also signed the Clean Air Act (1970), the Clean Water Act (1972), and the Pesticide Control Act (1972). The first Earth Day, on 22 April 1970, was a national teach-in on pollution and ecological problems on fifteen hundred college and ten thousand high-school campuses. But to many Americans the environmentalists seemed to be making the 1970s the doomsday decade.

Impact.

In 1971 Barry Commoner...