This timeline of the history of environmentalism is a listing of events that have shaped humanity's perspective on the environment. This timeline includes human induced disasters, environmentalists that have had a positive influence, and environmental legislation.
For a list of geological and climatological events that have shaped human history see Timeline of environmental history.
- Arabic medical treatises dealing with environmentalism or environmental science, including pollution, were written by Al-Kindi, Qusta ibn Luqa, Al-Razi, Ibn Al-Jazzar, al-Tamimi, al-Masihi, Avicenna, Ali ibn Ridwan, Ibn Jumay, Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, Abd-el-latif, Ibn al-Quff, and Ibn al-Nafis. Their works covered a number of subjects related to pollution, such as air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination, municipal solid waste mishandling, and environmental impact assessments of certain localities.[2]
- Cordoba, Al-Andalus, had waste containers and waste disposal facilities for litter collection.[3][4]
- William the Conqueror, a great lover of hunting, established the system of forest law. This operated outside the common law, and served to protect game animals and their forest habitat from destruction. In the year of his death, 1087, a poem, "The Rime of King William", inserted in the Peterborough Chronicle, expresses English indignation at the forest laws.
- 1306 — King Edward I of England bans the burning of sea-coal by proclamation in London, after its smoke had become a problem.[5][6]
- 1366 — In september, the city of Paris forces butchers to dispose of animal wastes outside the city.[7]
- 1388 — The English Parliament passes an act forbidding the throwing of filth and garbage into ditches, rivers and waters. The city of Cambridge also passes the first urban sanitary laws in England.[8]
- 1420 to 1427, Madeira islands: destruction of the laurisilva forest, or the woods which once clothed the whole island when the Portuguese settlers decided to clear the land for farming by setting most of the island on fire.[9] It is said that the fire burned for seven years.
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- — The last Mauritius dodo dies. The extinction was due to hunting, but also by the pigs, rats, dogs and cats brought to the island by settlers. Later the species has become an icon of animal extinction.[10]
- 1710 — Jonathan Swift notes the contents of London's gutters: "sweepings from butchers' stalls, dung, guts and blood, drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud..."[11]
- 1730 — In India, hundreds of Bishnois of Khejarli are killed trying to protect trees from Maharaja Abhai Singh of Marwar, who needed wood to fuel the lime kilns for cement to build his palace. This event has been considered as the origins of the 20th century Chipko movement.
- 1739 — Benjamin Franklin and neighbors petition Pennsylvania Assembly to stop waste dumping and remove tanneries from Philadelphia's commercial district. Foul smell, lower property values, disease and interference with fire fighting are cited. The industries complain that their rights are being violated, but Franklin argues for "public rights." Franklin and the environmentalists win a symbolic battle but the dumping goes on.
- 1748 — Jared Eliot, clergyman and physician, writes Essays on Field Husbandry in New England promoting soil conservation.
- 1762 to 1769 — Philadelphia committee led by Benjamin Franklin attempts to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.
- 1773 — William Bartram, (1739–1823). American naturalist sets out on a five-year journey through the US Southeast to describe wildlife and wilderness from Florida to the Mississippi. His book, Travels, is published in 1791 and becomes one of the early literary classics of the new United States of America.
- 1798 – Thomas Robert Malthus publishes An Essay on the Principle of Population, an evolutionary social theory of population dynamics as it had acted steadily throughout all previous history.
- 1820 — World human population reached 1 billion.[12]
- 1828 — Carl Sprengel formulates the Law of the Minimum stating that economic growth is limited not by the total of resources available, but by the scarcest resource.
- 1828/1830- Thomas Carlyle introduces the use of the term "environment" in its modern sense.[13]
- 1836 — Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes Nature.
- 1845 — First use of the term "carrying capacity" in a report by the US Secretary of State to the Senate.
- 1848 — Henry David Thoreau publishes Civil Disobedience.
- 1849 — Establishment of the U.S. Department of Interior.
- 1851 — Henry David Thoreau delivers an address to the Concord (Massachusetts) Lyceum declaring that "in Wildness is the preservation of the World." In 1863, this address is published posthumously as the essay "Walking" in Thoreau's Excursions.
- 1854 — Henry David Thoreau publishes Walden; or, Life in the Woods.
- 1859 — Publication of second edition of William Elliott's Carolina Sports by Land and Water (first published in 1846), an early example of the hunter-as-conservationist, a phenomenon which became increasingly important for conservationism.
- 1860 — Henry David Thoreau delivers an address to the Middlesex (Massachusetts) Agricultural Society, entitled "The Succession of Forest Trees," in which he analyzes aspects of what later came to be understood as forest ecology and urges farmers to plant trees in natural patterns of succession; the address is later published in (among other places) Excursions, becoming perhaps his most influential ecological contribution to conservationist thought.
- 1862 — John Ruskin publishes Unto This Last, which contains a proto-environmental indictment of the effects of unrestricted industrial expansion on both human beings and the natural world. The book influences Mahatma Gandhi, William Morris[14] and Patrick Geddes.[15]
- 1864 — George Perkins Marsh publishes Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action (revised 1874 as The Earth as Modified by Human Action), the first systematic analysis of humanity's destructive impact on the natural environment and a work which becomes (in Lewis Mumford's words) "the fountain-head of the conservation movement."
- 1865 — William Stanley Jevons publishes The Coal Question raising concerns about the sustainability of coal energy.
- 1866 — The term ecology is coined in German as Oekologie by Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834–1919) in his Generelle Morphologie der Organismen. Haeckel was an anatomist, zoologist, and field naturalist appointed professor of zoology at the Zoological Institute, Jena, in 1865. Haeckel was philosophically an enthusiastic Darwinian. Ecology is from the Greek oikos, meaning house or dwelling, and logos meaning discourse or the study of.
- — The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is founded.
- — World's first national park, Yellowstone National Park.
- — Arbor Day was founded by J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska City, Nebraska. It occurs every year on the last Friday in April in the US.
- — German graduate student Othmar Zeidler first synthesises DDT, later to be used as an insecticide.
- — General Revision Act.
- 1892 — John Muir, (1838–1914), founded the Sierra Club.
- 1895 — Svante Arrhenius presented to the Stockholm Physical Society the paper “On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air upon the Temperature of the Ground.” It is the first scientific work concerning the influence of a rise in carbon dioxide on atmospheric warming. He used previous studies by Josef Stefan, Arvid Gustaf Högbom, Samuel Langley, Leon Teisserenc de Bort, Knut Angstrom, Alexander Buchan, Luigi De Marchi, Joseph Fourier, C.S.M. Pouillet, and John Tyndall.[18]
- 1895 — Sewage cleanup in London means the return of some fish species (grilse, whitebait, flounder, eel, smelt) to the River Thames.
- — 7300 hectares of land in the Lake District of the Andes foothills in Patagonia are donated by Francisco Moreno as the first park, Nahuel Huapi National Park, in what eventually becomes the National Park System of Argentina.
- —Tsunesaburo Makiguchi published Jinsei chirigaku (The Geography of Human Life[19]) in October 1903
- 1905 — The term smog is coined by Henry Antoine Des Voeux in a London meeting to express concern over air pollution.
- — The National Audubon Society is founded.
- 1906 — Antiquities Act, passed by US Congress which authorized the president to set aside national monument sites.
- — San Francisco earthquake and subsequent fires destroy much of the city.
- — The National Conservation Commission, appointed in June by President Roosevelt.
- — An article by Robert Underwood Johnson in Century magazine, "A High Price to Pay for Water," helps bring the Hetch Hetchy controversy to national attention.
- 1909 — US President Theodore Roosevelt convenes the North American Conservation Conference, held in Washington, D.C. and attended by representatives of Canada, Newfoundland, Mexico, and the United States.
1910s
- — Scientific American reports alcohol-gasoline anti-knock blend is "universally" expected to be the fuel of the future. Seven years later, in Public Health Service hearings, General Motors and Standard Oil spokesmen will claim that there are no alternatives to leaded gasoline as an anti-knock additive.
- — Congress approves the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918, which implements a 1916 Convention (between the U.S. and Britain, acting for Canada) for the Protection of Migratory birds, and establishes responsibility for international migratory bird protection.
- – Spanish flu kills between 50 and 100 million people worldwide
1920s
- 1920 — Theoretical Biology by Jakob von Uexküll. Uexküll's work becomes important to the theory of embodied cognition, and thus begins formally to erode the notion of a better resurrected world after death and/or 'the apocalypse'/extinction in the west.
- 1921 — Thomas Midgley Jr. discovers lead components to be an efficient antiknock agent in gasoline engines. In spite of the well known toxic effects, lead was in ubiquitous use. It was first banned from use in Japan in 1986.[20]
- 1922 — The Izaak Walton League is founded.
- 1924 — The death of English textile worker Nellie Kershaw from asbestosis was the first account of disease attributed to occupational asbestos exposure.
- 1927 — Great Mississippi Flood.
- 1928 — Thomas Midgley Jr. develops chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) as a non-toxic refrigerant. The first warnings of damage to stratospheric ozone were published by Molina and Rowland 1974. They shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for their work. Since 1987 world production is reduced under the Montreal Protocol and banned in most countries.
- 1929 — the Swann Chemical Company develops polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs) for transformer coolant use. Research in the 1960s revealed PCBs to be potent carcinogens. Banned from production in the US 1976, probably 1 million tonnes of PCBs were manufactured in total globally.
1970s
- 1970 — Earth Day – April 22., millions of people gather in the United States for the first Earth Day organized by Gaylord Nelson, former senator of Wisconsin, and Denis Hayes, Harvard graduate student.
- — US Environmental Protection Agency established.
- — Francis A. Schaeffer publishes Pollution and the Death of Man.
- — Arne Næss leads the nonviolent civil disobedience protest against damming of the Mardalsfossen waterfall, later publishing on the deep ecology philosophy.
- — Center for Science in the Public Interest founded.
- — Environmental Action founded.
- — League of Conservation Voters founded.
- — Natural Resources Defense Council founded.
- — Norman Borlaug, the father of the Green Revolution, wins the Nobel Peace Prize.
- — A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold is reissued.
- — Occupational Safety and Health Act
- — Public Interest Research Group founded.
- 1971 — The international environmental organisation Greenpeace founded in Vancouver, Canada. Greenpeace has later developed national and regional offices in 41 countries worldwide.
- — International Institute for Environment and Development established in London, UK. One offshoot is the World Resources Institute with its biannual report World Resources since 1984.
- — Nonprofit Keep America Beautiful launches the nationwide "Crying Indian" television public service advertisement, reaching nearly every American household.
- — Public Citizen founded.
- — Calvert Cliffs' Coordinating Committee, Inc. v. United States Atomic Energy Commission
- — United Nations Environment Programme founded as a result of the Stockholm conference.
- — the Oslo Convention on dumping waste at sea, later merged with the Paris Convention on land-based sources of marine pollution into the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic.
- — The Club of Rome publishes its report Limits to Growth, which has sold 30 million copies in more than 30 translations, making it the best selling environmental book in world history.
- — Marine Mammal Protection Act.
- — Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act (also known as Ocean Dumping Act).
- — Noise Control Act.
- — Clean Water Act.
- — Coastal Zone Management Act.
- — The Blue Marble photograph
- — Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) – major amendments
- — (June 14) After seven months of hearings, the United States Environmental Protection Agency bans most uses of DDT.[24]
- — The Trust for Public Land founded.
- — Values Party founded.
- — A Blueprint for Survival published.
- 1973 — OPEC announces oil embargo against United States.
- — World Conservation Union (IUCN) meeting drafts the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES)
- — Endangered Species Preservation Act.
- — E. F. Schumacher publishes Small Is Beautiful.
- — Cousteau Society founded.
- — National Reserves Management Act.
- — World human population reached 4 billion.[12]
- — State Natural Heritage Program Network launched in the US.
- — Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)
- — Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act
- — Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act.
- — Abalone Alliance founded.
- — Sea Shepherd Conservation Society founded.
- — New York City blackout of 1977
- — Ekofisk oil field spill.
- — U.S. admits to neutron bomb testing.
- 1978 — Brominated flame-retardants replaces PCBs as the major chemical flame retardant. Swedish scientists noticed these substances to be accumulating in human breast milk 1998. First ban on use in the EU 2004.
- — Love Canal contamination revealed.
- — Amoco Cadiz oil spill
- — Samuel Epstein publishes The Politics of Cancer
- — David Ehrenfeld publishes The Arrogance of Humanism
- — Offshore drilling begins off the coast of New Jersey
- — Three Mile Island accident, worst nuclear power accident in US history.
- — Hans Jonas publishes The Imperative of Responsibility: In Search of Ethics for the Technological Age.
- — Supersonic airliner Concorde is put in regular operation in spite of concern due to its sonic boom and the potential for its engine exhaust to damage the ozone layer. The last regular flight landed in 2003.
- — Fifth largest oil spill ever when the S.S. Atlantic Empress collides with Aegean Captain off of Trinidad and Tobago
1980s
- 1980 – Superfund (Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act or CERCLA)
- — Earth First! founded
- — The Global 2000 Report to the President
- — International Union for Conservation of Nature publishes its World Conservation Strategy
- — William R. Catton Jr. publishes Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change
- — Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act
- — Low Level Radioactive Waste Policy Act of 1980
- — United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is signed on December the 10th at Montego Bay. Part XII of which significantly developed port-state control of pollution from ships.
- — Bat Conservation International founded.
- — Co-op America founded.
- — Earth Island Institute founded.
- — Rocky Mountain Institute founded.
- — Sewergate
- — World Charter for Nature
- — Nuclear Waste Policy Act
- — Evacuation of Times Beach, Missouri
- — Green Committees of Correspondence founded.
- — North America Bioregional Congress founded.
- — Brundtland Commission appointed.
- — 1984–1985 famine in Ethiopia
- — Worldwatch Institute publishes its first State of the World report.
- — Chemical leak in Institute, West Virginia
- — Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
- — Antarctic ozone hole discovered.
- — FDA approved bovine somatotropin
- 1986 — Chernobyl, world's worst nuclear power accident occurs at a plant in Ukraine.
- — Emergency Wetlands Resources Act.
- — Tetraethyllead phase-out was completed in the US.
- — Northern Rivers Rerouting Project abandoned by the USSR government.
- 1987 — World human population reached 5 billion.[12]
- — The Report of the Brundtland Commission, Our Common Future on sustainable development, is published.
- — Conservation International founded.
- — First Debt-for-Nature Swap
- — First meeting of the U.S. Greens
- — Montreal Protocol opened for signature.
- — National Appliance Energy Conservation Act
- — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established by two United Nations organizations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to assess the "risk of human-induced climate change".
- — Student Environmental Action Coalition founded.
- — Lawsuit brought by Environmental Defense Fund results in McDonald's agreeing to use biodegradable containers.
- — Alternative Motor Fuels Act
- 1989 — Exxon Valdez creates largest oil spill in US history.
- — Montreal Protocol on substances that deplete the ozone layer entered into force on January 1. Since then, it has undergone five revisions, in 1990 (London), 1992 (Copenhagen), 1995 (Vienna), 1997 (Montreal), and 1999 (Beijing).
- — influenced by protests by Kirishi residents, the USSR Supreme Soviet decides to close down the country's eight paraffin-fed single-cell protein plants.[25]
- - The Natural Step founded.
1990s
- — European Environment Agency was established by EEC Regulation 1210/1990 and became operational in 1994. It is headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark.
- — The IPCC first assessment report was completed, and served as the basis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
- — Clean Air Act – major amendment
- — Redwood Summer
- — Dolphin safe label introduced.
- — Leave No Trace education program developed by the United States Forest Service in conjunction with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS).
- 1991 — The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty was signed 4 October. The agreement provides for the protection of the Antarctic environment through five specific annexes on marine pollution, fauna, and flora, environmental impact assessments, waste management, and protected areas. It prohibits all activities relating to mineral resources except scientific.
- — World's worst oil spill occurs in Kuwait during war with Iraq.
- — Kuwaiti oil fires
- — Global Environment Facility (GEF) was established by donor governments.
- — United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change opened for signature on 9 May ahead of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
- — The international Convention on Biological Diversity opened for signature on 5 June in connection with the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
- — World Oceans Day began on 8 June at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
- — The Canadian government closes all eastern seaboard fishing grounds due to insufficient recovery of the stock.
- — Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency established.
- — The metaphor Ecological footprint is coined by William Rees.
- — The first genetically modified food crop released to the market. It remains a strongly controversial environmental issue.
- — Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics is established.
- 1995 — Scotland's Environmental Protection Agency is established.
- 1996 — Western Shield, a wildlife conservation project is started in Western Australia, and through successful work has taken several species off of the state, national, and international (IUCN) Endangered Species Lists..
- 1997 — July, U.S. Senate unanimously passed by a 95–0 vote the Byrd-Hagel Resolution, which stated that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol that did not include binding targets and timetables for developing as well as industrialized nations.
- — The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in Kyoto, Japan in December. It is actually an amendment to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Countries that ratify this protocol commit to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and five other greenhouse gases.
- 1999 — World human population reached 6 billion.[12]
- — The IPCC release the IPCC Third Assessment Report.
- — European Heat Wave resulting in the premature deaths of at least 35,000 people.
- 2004—The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2004 to Wangari Maathai for her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace. Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment. ... Maathai combines science, social commitment and active politics.[26]
- 2004 — 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami affects countries surrounding the Indian Ocean, killing nearly a quarter of a million people.
- — FBI initiates Operation Backfire – an anti-terrorist law enforcement operation against "Eco-Radicals."
- 2005 — Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma cause widespread destruction and environmental harm to coastal communities in the US Gulf Coast region.
- — The Kyoto Protocol came into force on February 16 following ratification by Russia on November 18, 2004.
- — The BBC's "Climate Chaos" season includes Are We Changing Planet Earth?, a two-part investigation into global warming by David Attenborough.
- — The Stern Review is published. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, says that it shows that scientific evidence of global warming was "overwhelming" and its consequences "disastrous".
- — World human population reached 6.5 billion[27]
- — Power Shift 2007 – the first National Youth Climate Conference, held in College Park, MD and Washington, D.C. November 2–5, 2007. Power Shift 2007: The Energy Action Coalition saw over 5,000 youth converge in Washington, D.C. to build their movement, lobby congress, and make a statement about the way youth feel about Global Warming.
- 2007 — The MT Hebei Spirit oil spill was a major oil spill in South Korea that began on the morning of 7 December 2007.[28]
- 2009 — Power Shift 2009 – The Energy Action Coalition hosted the second national youth climate conference to be held at the Washington Convention Center from February 27 to March 2, 2009. The conference aims to attract more than 10,000 students and young people and will include a Lobby Day.
2010s
- 2010 – Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill reveals the vulnerability of fossil fuel infrastructure.
- 2011 — United Nations designates day that world human population reached 7 billion.
- 2011 - At the Fukushima nuclear power plant, the gigantic wave surged over defences and flooded the reactors, sparking a major disaster.[29]
- 2014 — The IPCC release the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report,
- 2015 - The Paris Agreement is signed; the goal is to keep global warming below 2 degrees.
- 2016 - President Trump, who describes climate change as a "hoax", starts a series of attacks on environmental protection regulation. Consistent with a previous promise to dismantle the EPA, he selects Scott Pruitt, who made a career of attacking the EPA and lobbying for oil companies, as EPA administrator.[30]
- 2018 - The IPCC releases a special report, warning that a 1.5 degree global warming could have disastrous consequences.[31]
- 2018 - Greta Thunberg starts a school strike for climate, sitting outside the Swedish Parliament.
- 2019 - Earth Day and National Cleanup Day organize the first coordinated cleanup event held in all 50 States and US Territories
2020s
- 2020 - the COVID-19 pandemic inspires stay-at-home orders, resulting in a modest decrease in CO2 production.[32]
- 2020—The hottest year ever recorded wraps up the hottest decade ever recorded.[33]
- 2020—The use of Personal Protective Equipment and Masks and disposables has exploded due to COVID-19.[34]
- 2021 - Dutch court rules oil giant Royal Dutch Shell must reduce its GHG emissions with 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 emissions.[35]
- 2021 - Western North America heat wave with temperatures reaching up to 49,6C.
- 2021 - President Biden rejoins the Paris Accord and reinstates essential environmental regulations.[36]
- 2021 - European floods caused by heavy rain fall impacting multiple countries in Western Europe.
- 2021—IPCC's 6th report states that the science of climate change is irrefutable and that irreversible changes have already occurred.[37]
- 2021—Japan announced it will release 1.25 million tons of treated wastewater contaminated by the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant into the Pacific Ocean. The government said it is the best way to deal with tritium and trace amounts of other radionuclides in the water.[38]
- 2022 - In West Virginia v. EPA, the US Supreme Court limits the ability of the EPA to regulate carbon emissions.
Aboul-Enein, H. Yousuf; Zuhur, Sherifa (2004), Islamic Rulings on Warfare, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College, Diane Publishing Co., Darby PA, p. 22, ISBN 9781584871774
Coates, Peter. Nature: Western Attitudes Since Ancient Times.
Polity Press, 1998. (Pg. 163).
Boardman, Philip. The Worlds of Patrick Geddes. Routledge, 1978 (pg. 33).
KIRISHI: A GREEN SUCCESS STORY? Archived 2009-08-07 at the Wayback Machine (Johnson's Russia List, Dec. 19, 2002). Original source: Olga Tsepilova, "V malom industrial'nom gorode Rossii" [In a Small Industrial City in Russia], Pro et Contra, Vol. 7, No. 1, Winter 2002, pp. 68–83.