Activity 4.1 – US Environmental History and Major Regulations

 Historical Summary

    
    All throughout history, the environmental has changed in many ways. Environmental has evolved over the centuries from exploitation ideas to different approaches. This timeline is an overview of Americans' view of the developments that shape the environmental.

    Starting in the early days and views on nature during the 17th-19th centuries. In early colonial America, humans saw nature as a primary resource. With the big plots of land that were seen as opportunities to be able to settle and grow more practices started being adapted to using nature, such as things like mining and farming. During this time people had thought that these resources had no limit. These views were helped by the concepts of Manifest Destiny. This time period showed that nature was important for humans to be able to utilize and grow, and by the 19th century, this was seen to fuel the economic growth of their settlements.
    
    Around the middle of the 19th century there started to be shifts in the views that were had on nature. Nature was now starting to be seen as something not to just capitalize from but something that is more like an asset. During this time we were also seeing the rise of conservationist George Perkins Marsh, who would advocate how people's actions were destroying the environment and could have consequences and ultimately advocate for people to be more responsible. Because of these views, it sparked the creation of things we know today as our national parks. The very first national park was Yellowstone being created in 1872.

    Now we are getting into the era known as The Progressive Era which was in the 19th-20th century. Along with this new era came with the addition of conservation to the national agenda. The president during this time Theodore Roosevelt had seen and believed that conservation was extremely important to keeping America's heritage. This then led to the creation of even more national parks, which showed the dedication during this era in an attempt to protect the environment.

    During the 1960s-70s, the environmental movement gained a lot of attention with each year. This gained more attention with the work of Rachel Carson, which showed the damage and danger that human activity was having on the environment. Activism really stood out during this time period because of the millions of people that were advocating for the protection of our environment this brought along the creation of Acts to protect our environment, such as the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, these laws were put in place to protect the environment.
    
    During the 1980s the U.S. started to care more about the growth of the economy than protecting the environment, on top of this during this time period they were trying to loosen the laws and reduce the regulations on the environment to help businesses grow, which would lead to weak protections for the environment. This choice brought along lots of conflicts which we can still see going on today.
    
    From the 1990s-Present day, we have seen that humans are trying to find a fine balance in between the growth of the economy and the protection of the environment, there have been many concepts to help with this. Most importantly the creation of renewable energy which have been able to reduce the use and depletion of nonrenewable sources. Although much has been due to help, we are still seeing warnings about this environment and that we need to do more in order to make sure we can protect it.


Timeline



Work Cited

Assisted by Grammarly

Visme. (n.d.). https://my.visme.co/editor/WXljSWJib0xHYk54NytKNVlGSC92dz09Ojo5N2FTckI3dW9wMUpXa0l0YWxNWWtRPT0=/basics?template=c2lOek9XVm9UQytGd2dRWWx3Y0VyZz09OjpuOGxPNytGOW1oQUpRSi9Ga2wvTlZnPT0 

Connexions, Rice University. (1970, January 1). Sustainability: A comprehensive foundation : Tom Theis : Free download, borrow, and streaming. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/ost-earth-sciences-col11325/mode/2up 

Russell, E., & Fairfax, S. K. (2014). Guide to U.S. Environmental Policy (Links to an external site.). CQ Press.       https://nvcproxy.alamo.edu/login?url=https://search-ebscohost-com.nvcproxy.alamo.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=862170&site=ehost-live&scope=site&custid=s4653251&authtype=ip&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_407



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