GenZ-Earther

Source: NRES Purdue

Because I myself am currently a sophomore majoring in environmental science I was thinking to myself, How did this field that I’m studying come to be? I have been interested in the topic for such a long time now so I decided that I should dig into the depths of the internet and see how this whole field began.

First of all, before we get started, what is environmental science? Environmental science is an interdisciplinary program that integrates several scientific fields like agronomy, biology, and chemistry in order to study the environment and our role as humans in it. Early in the 1800s, there were several fields of science that were specific to certain studies. Things like botany, focused just on the study of plants or geology focused just on the study of rocks. However, in the mid-1800s, the field of ecology began to emerge. It didn’t exactly focus on a specific plant or animal but rather on the natural environment as a whole. Around this time, Romanticism began to occur, and with it became a sort of beginning in terms of the environmentalist movement that later peaked in the 1970s. Books like Man and Nature by George Perkins, “challenged the general belief that human impact on nature was generally benign or negligible” (UWU.edu). In 1872. Yellowstone, the first National Park was established. Fast forward to the early 1900s and people like John Muir came to prominence due to his love for nature and its beauty. His ecological thinking and philosophy caught the eye of the president at the time, Teddy Roosevelt who later established, “150 national forests, 51 federal bird reserves, four national game preserves, five national parks, and 18 national monuments on over 230 million acres of public land” (Doi.gov).

Source: National Park Service

After WW2, people began to realize what man was capable of and that nature was no longer the biggest threat to mankind’s survival, it was mankind itself. Because before the war many people still saw nature as a force to be reckoned with and something that could not be tamed but after it was seen that man could create bombs that could burn brighter than the face of the sun, it was evident that we were now the masters of the Earth.

In the 1950s, America began industrializing at an accelerating rate, and people began settling down and demanding all sorts of things to make their life comfortable. Fridges, automobiles, and plastics, were all in high demand. Factories began churning these items out for eager consumers, without any regard towards the environment or human health. People began to notice how polluted their environment started to become. In Cleveland Ohio, the Cuyahoga river famously caught fire in 1952, but this wasn’t the first time, in fact, it was the 9th time that it had happened since 1868 (History.com). In Los Angeles, California the air had gotten so bad, that during WW2, people would occasionally mistake the smog as a gas attack from the Japanese. “Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) and Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), together with nuclear proliferation and growing concerns over the anthropogenic release of toxins and chemicals, raised awareness about the need to study the effects of human actions on the environment” (Kte’pi, 2022). Americans began to realize that how we are treating our environment is criminal and that we needed to start to figure out ways in which man and nature could coexist. Scientists began to figure out ways how to improve air and water quality as well as find safer alternatives for pesticides. And after a lot of research and politics, the U.S. government came out with some of the most effective legislation in the history of this country. The Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972 have done so much for this country. It’s absolutely insane just how much it has had a positive effect on not just our health but the environment’s health. The banning of DDT was also very much appreciated given how it literally saved our national bird, the bald eagle, from extinction. But, behind all this legislative action was the field of environmental science. It studied the problems and came up with solutions to many of the issues that America faced in the 60s and 70s. Agronomists, hydrologists, biologists, chemists, and many other scientists banded together to figure out the root of these environmental crises. And that’s what I love most about environmental science, it is a cooperative effort from many fields, in the pursuit of finding solutions for today’s toughest environmental problems.

Source: University of Colorado

Sources

-Blakemore, E. (2019, April 22). The Shocking River Fire that fueled the creation of the EPA. History.com. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.history.com/news/epa-earth-day-cleveland-cuyahoga-river-fire-clean-water-act

-Marsh, G. P., Lowenthal, E. by D., & Cronon, F. by W. (n.d.). Man and nature. University of Washington Press. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295983165/man-and-nature/#:~:text=In%20Man%20and%20Nature%2C%20first,their%20abuse%20of%20the%20environment.

-Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. (n.d.). Environmental science. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.britannica.com/science/environmental-science