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1980 - 1989

1980, May 21 -- President Carter announces the relocation of 700 families in the Love Canal area of Niagara Falls, New York, who had been exposed to toxic wastes deposited there by Hooker Chemical company.

1980 -- "Superfund" legislation (CERCLA: The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act ) directs EPA to clean up abandoned toxic waste dumps. The law is a reaction to the disasters at Love Canal and Times Beach (below). The Superfund was initially designed to spend $1.6 billion over five years and was funded through new taxes on the chemical industry. In 1986, the Superfund budget was expanded to $9 billion. But Congress and environmentalists found the EPA program wanting under President Reagan. They said there was inadequate monitoring of waste sites and a slow cleanup pace. A 1992 report found that only 84 of the 1,245 sites designated by the EPA as the most polluted had been successfully cleaned up. Republican efforts to overhaul the Superfund program and cut its budget began in the mid-1990s and proved successful around 2001.

1980 -- National Academy of Sciences calls leaded gasoline the greatest source of atmospheric lead pollution.

1980-- National Security Act of 1980 mandates all gasoline be blended with a minimum of 10 percent grain alcohol--"gasohol." Subsequently scuttled by Reagan Administration. Also Gasohol Competition Act passed by Congress to stop oil companies' discrimination against sales of gasohol at their pumps.

1980 -- Global 2000 Report calls for international cooperation in solving environmental problems.

1980 -- Sea Shepherd Society sinks whaling vessels Sierra in Lisbon harbor and Isba I and Isba II off the coast of Spain. The vessels were sunk with explosives, but there were no injuries (New York Times, Nov 10, 1986).

1980 -- After intense lobbying by the Carter administration and celebrities like John Denver, Congress passes Alaskan National Interest Lands Conservation Act setting aside over 100 million acres for conservation and 26 new rivers in the Wild and Scenic Rivers System.

1980 -- World Conservation Strategy published by International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, with the support of UNEP and the World Wildlife Fund. The strategy is a basis for many national conservation plans in developing nations.

1980 -- Brazilian rubber tappers union organizer Wilson Pinheiro assassinated. Eight years later colleague Chico Mendez meets the same fate. Both dared to defy loggers and cattle ranchers on behalf of rubber tappers, native Brazillians and the rain forest.

1980 - November 20 -- Jefferson Island salt mine in New Iberia, Louisiana collapses after a Texaco oil-drilling rig on nearby Lake Peigneur accidentally penetrates an abandoned salt-mining cavern. The emptying lake empties pulling houses, barges, tugboats and oil rigs down into a half mile crater but no injuries or deaths are reported.

1980 -- American Attitudes Toward and Knowledge of Animals, a study commissioned by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Author Stephen Kellert identifies a generational shift in attitudes from utilitarian views predominant among people raised on farms to more empathic views found mainly among people who do not use animals in connection with making their livings. Franklin Loew, formerly dean of the Tufts University and Cornell University veterinary schools, pointed out nearly 15 years after Kellert published the data that the study not only predicted the rise of the animal rights movement but also the eventual success of it in achieving a cultural transformation, as the holders of the utilitarian viewpoint die out. (M. Clifton, 2007)

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1980:

1981

1981 -- Lois Gibbs forms the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste -- now named the Center for Health, Environment and Justice

1981 -- Vice President George Bush's Task Force on Regulatory Relief proposes to relax or eliminate US leaded gas phaseout, despite mounting evidence of serious health problems.

1981 -- Congress passes Coastal Barriers Resources Act and Nuclear Waste Policy Act.

1981 -- Ocean Arks International founded by John Todd.

1981 -- People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals is founded by former Washington D.C. animal control chief Ingrid Newkirk and former Fund for Animals volunteer and Sea Shepherd Conservation Society crew member Alex Pacheco. PETA becomes the dominant U.S. animal rights group in part due to the prominence of the "Silver Spring monkey case," in which researcher Edward Taub was prosecuted for cruelty as result of an undercover investigation by Pacheco. Taub was convicted on six of 17 counts, but the convictions were reversed on jurisdictional grounds. The case was in court from August 1981 to May 1991. Belonging to the National Institutes of Health, the monkeys remained in NIH custody until all either died or were used in terminal experiments. (M. Clifton, 2007)

1981 - Members of Earth First! drape a 300 foot banner, painted to resemble a crack, down the front of the Glen Canyon Dam.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1981:

"The notion that only the short-term goals and immediate happiness of Homo sapiens should be considered in making moral decisions about the use of Earth is lethal, not only to nonhuman organisms but to humanity."

1982

1982 -- US Congress amends Endangered Species Act to allow Tellico Dam to be built on the theory that protection of the Snail Darter was "incidental" to the main purpose behind the dam. While environmentalists had won the case TVA v. Hill in 1978, the widely believed caricature of the controversy -- that a tiny fish could halt a massive hydroelectric project through a loophole in the ESA -- was grossly inaccurate. The dam did not generate electric power but was rather a recreation project that cost far more than its benefits. The dam also flooded important Cherokee Indian historical sites.

1982 -- October 28 -- UN World Charter for Nature passes by a vote of 111 in favor to 1 against (United States). The Charter says:

1982 -- World Resources Institute founded.

1982 -- Earth Island Institute founded by David Brower.

1982 -- Attempts to build a PCB landfill in an African American neighborhood in Warren County, N.C. result in demonstrations and trigger a nationwide movement for environmental justice.

1982 -- December -- EPA study confirms dangerous levels of dioxin had threatened the health of residents in a small Missouri town called Times Beach. Dioxin is a manufacturing byproduct that had been linked to cancer, birth defects and liver damage. In this case, very high exposure resulted when dioxin was deliberately mixed with waste oil and sprayed on Times Beach's unpaved roads to control dust. Between 1983 and 1985, the federal government spent $33 million to buy the homes and property of 2,400 people in Times Beach. They were relocated and the town was demolished.

1982 -- Vandana Shiva, leader of the Chipko movement, founds The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in New Delhi, India.

1982 -- Korea Animal Protection Society founded by Sunnan Kum and Philippine Animal Welfare Society founded by Nina Hontiveros-Lichauco. Both begin campaigns that win legislative victories in Korea (1991) and the Philippines (1997). KAPS thereafter struggled to obtain real change in Korea almost alone until Sunnan's sister Kyenan Kum formed International Aid for Korean Animals in 1998. IAKA revived global attention to the issue. Other Korean animal advocacy groups started at about the same time, and more have since debuted. (M. Clifton, 2007)

1982 -- Environmental Justice activists protest polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) landfill in Warren County, NC. Here, Dr. Benjamin Chavis coins the term “environmental racism”.

1983

1983 -- 10 December -- New UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is signed by 117 States

1983 - Dave Foreman, Earth First! founder, is injured when a logging truck runs over him and drags him a hundred yards in an Oregon protest over logging in old growth forests.

1983 -- National Academy of Science report on CFCs downplays threat to ozone layer; Under new Reagan administration guidelines, EPA stops most research on ozone depletion and industry stops research on CFC substitutes. Meanwhile, British Antarctica Survey station at Halley Bay reveals increasing holes in ozone layer.

1983 -- President Reagan's anti-environmental cabinet members, James Watt of Interior and Anne Goresuch of EPA, resign under public pressure.

1983 -- US Congress passes International Environmental Protection Act.

1983 - Informal moratorium on radioactive waste dumping at sea following Greenpeace protests.

1983 -- Black residents in Triana, Alabama settle a $25 million lawsuit against EPA, the Dept. of Defense and Olin Chemical Company over DDT from Redstone Arsenal Army base.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1981:

1984

1984 -- Worldwatch Institute begins annual State of the World publications.

1984 -- Start of a 10-year suspension of the Atlantic Canada offshore seal hunt. The hunt resumed in 1995, after the failure of the depleted cod fishery to recover from overfishing left the Canadian and Newfoundland governments looking for someone or something to blame, and by 2002 was back up to near-peak levels. (M. Clifton, 2007)

1984 -- Dec. 3 -- Bhopal disaster. Union Carbide Co. fertilizer plant leaks methyl icocyanide in Indian town of Bhopal. 2000 dead, another 8,000 die of chronic effects. estimated 2000 casualties, 100,000 injuries, and significant damage to livestock and crops. The International Medical Commission on Bhopal1 estimates that as of 1994 upwards of 50,000 people remained partially or totally disabled. See Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro, Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster, translated from French, Warner Books, 2002. Also: Chemsafety library file on Bhopal.

1984 -- Maneka Gandhi formed People for Animals, the first national animal advocacy network in India, with active chapters in nearly every major city. Many operate the local Animal Birth Control programs. From 1998-2002 Maneka Gandhi serves as the first minister of state for animal welfare in India. She was removed from office after conflicting with the biomedical research and pharmaceutical industries, as well as with practitioners of animal sacrifice, and the authority of the ministry is significantly reduced.

1985

1985 -- Ozone -- British scientist Joe Farman publishes discovery of ozone hole over Antarctica, confirmed by US NASA satellite monitoring. Meanwhile, US EPA begins reconsidering CFC regulations. And the United Nations Environment Program begins negotiations under the Vienna Convention for the Protection of Ozone which leads to the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

1985 -- July 10 -- Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior is sunk in Auckland, New Zealand harbor. Activist photographer Fernando Pereiraman is killed.

1985 - Sept. 18 - Le Monde reveals that the Rainbow Warrior bombing was carried out by French government intelligence agents Alain Mafart and Dominique Prieur. under orders from Cmdr. Louis Pierre Dillias of the Aspretto underwater combat school. The French government was trying to stop protests over French nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific.

1985 -- International Rivers Network formed to oppose dam construction worldwide.

1985 -- Indian scholars issue "Statement of Shared Concern on the State of India's Environment."

"The process of transforming India into a wasteland, which began under the British rule, has continued under post - independence governments. The most brutal assault has been on the country's common property resources, on its grazing lands, forests, rivers, ponds, lakes, coastal zones and increasingly the atmosphere. The use of these common property resources has been organized and encouraged by the state in a manner that has led to their relentless degradation and destruction... Nature can never be managedwell unless the people closest to it are involved in its management..." (quoted in Guha, 2000).

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1985:

1986

1986 - Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act passes in the wake of Bhopal and other chemical disasters despite opposition from chemical companies and the EPA. The act requires manufacturers to report releases and transfers of 330 toxic chemicals to EPA for entry into public database. Only covers about 5% of all toxic emissions. By the turn of the century, Right to Know laws are under fire again.

1986 -- Primary phaseout of leaded gas in US completed. Study shows health benefit to technology cost ratio at 10:1.

1986 -- April 26. Chernobyl nuclear reactor explodes in Ukraine. Immediate deaths are numbered at 31, mid-term deaths are estimated around 4,200. Various agencies report 10 fold to 200 fold increases in thyroid cancer. Over 2,000 square miles evacuated. Long term consequences may be severe, as noted in the article "The Children of Chernobyl."

1986 -- Aug. 21 -- A cloud of carbon dioxide gas boils out of Lake Nyos in Cameroon, Africa, killing 1,700 people. The gas cloud hugged the ground and flowed quickly down valleys, travelling as far as 15 miles (25 km) from the lake and moving fast enough to flatten vegetation, including a few trees. The natural disaster is especially significant when considering schemes for fossil fuel "carbon capture" and "sequestration" technologies as a presumed method to forestall global warming.

1986 --November 1 -- Chemical spill in Basel, Switzerland creates massive fish kill in Rhine River through Germany, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. The spill occurs when a fire breaks out in a chemical warehouse owned by Sandoz S.A. Fire fighters hose down the blaze and, in the process, wash tons of toxic chemicals into the Rhine. Swiss authorities did not issue timely notices that could have led to containment downstream. Contamination cuts of drinking and irrigation water for millions of people and kills half a million fish. Despite international legal agreements, Switzerland was not required to pay for the damage. Sandoz was held liable.

"Much of the work of the last 10 years has been destroyed," the New York Times quoted POrof. Ragnar Kinzelback, head of a scientific team based at the Dept. of Zoology at the Technical University in Darmstadt. (Nov. 13, p.A3)

The London Times reported on Nov. 21, 2000 that there is evidence that the E. German "Stazi" secret police sabotaged the Sandoz plant possibly in order to take attention away from activities in East Germany. Similar bombings took place in Belgium and Germany in the year beforehand.

1986 -- Diane Fossey murdered in her cabin in Karisoke, Rwanda. The case is never solved.

1986 -- Safe Drinking Water Act amended to set standards for 83 contaminants and ban use of lead pipes and solder in new drinking water systems. Meanwhile (June 4) drinking water is temporarily shut off on 16 floors of the World Trade Center after unacceptable levels of lead were found in samples. (New York Times, p.3).

1986 - Nov. 9 - Sea Shepherd Conservation Society sinks two whaling vessels in Reykjavik harbor, Iceland. No injuries are reported.

1986 -- International Whaling Commission imposes a global ban on commercial capture of baleen whales and sperm whales. Japan formally accedes to the ban in 1988, but continues and steadily escalates so-called "research whaling." Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1993.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1986:

1987

1987 -- Sept. 16 -- The Montreal Protocol international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals signed by 24 countries, including the US, Japan, Canada and EEC nations.

1987 -- Plastic Pollution Research and Control Act passes US Congress, forbidding ocean dumping of plastic materials.

1987 -- US General Accounting Office study shows a strong correlation between the location of toxic waste dump sites and the location of minority communities.

1987 -- A Long Island garbage barge, the Mobro, begins a 6,000 mile journey to find a dumping place. Medical waste is one concern.

1987 -- Government of India approves Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river in the central region of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra states. Large protests break out over the environmental costs of the dam project. The dam would create the world's largest man-made lake, flooding tens of thousands of acres, eliminating forests, and submerging many religious shrines visited regularly by pilgrims .Social consequences are also a problem. ''The tribal people here say they won't move to Gujarat because they would be considered inferior, their language is different, and their daughters couldn't be married,'' says Medha Patkar of Save the Narmada told the Christian Science Monitor. Patkar was repeatedly beaten and arrested by the police, and almost died during a 22-day hunger strike in 1991. That year, the World Bank concluded that the project was ill-conceived.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1987:

1988

1988 -- In the wake of the Chernobyl disaster, Russian scientists form the Ecology and Peace Association, electing as president S.P. Zalyghin, whose astonishing statement -- "Only the people can save nature" -- implied that the government and the Communist party had failed. Another green crusader, Svet Zabelin, helps form the Socio-Ecological Union (SEU), which works to help residents of areas contaminated with radiation and preserve threatened species. The movement spreads rapidly in Russia and Eastern Europe as a vehicle for wider political protests which, until then, had been met with strong Soviet government resistance. In 1993, Zabelin is awarded the Goldman Prize.

1988 --Piper Alpha oil platform explosion Scotland UK, Scotland, off Aberdeen, North Sea

1988 - March 22 -- Over 100 nations sign Basil convention, a treaty on international toxic waste shipments. The treaty is specifically designed to control toxic waste shipments to developing nations. The treaty doesn't always protect nations, as was the case in Ivory Coast in 2006. Also see Basel Action Network web page and the official UNEP Basel Convention page. US eventually signs convention but not 1994 "Basel Ban" prohibiting all toxic waste exports from industrial to developing nations.

1988 -- June 23 -- NASA scientist James Hanson and others warn Congress about possible consequences from global warming -- rising sea levels, drought and increased storm severity. Meanwhile, the World Meterological Organization and UN Environmental Program establish the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). At the World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere in Toronto, Canada, a resolution calls for global CO2 emissions reductions of 20% by 2005.. A United Nations resolution is approved characterizing climate as a "common concern of mankind."

1988 - NASA reports ozone layer eroding much faster than predicted. Meanwhile, DuPont -- the largest CFC producer -- announces an end to CFC production, and stustitute of safer chemicals.

1988 -- Beaches close along the US East Coast due to contaminated medical waste. Few realize that pollution had closed beaches before in the 1920s and 30s.

1988 -- International treaty bans all ocean dumping of wastes.

1988 -- Penan forest communities of Malaysia organize blockades and demonstrations to force a stop to timbering on the island of Borneo.

1988 -- Plastic Pollution Control Act forbids ocean dumping of plastic materials.

1988 -- West Harlem Environmental Action founded by Peggy Shepard, Vernice Miller and Chuck Sutton.

1988 -- Dec. 22 -- Assassination of Chico Mendez, leader of Brazil's rubber tappers (Taperos) movement to save the rain forest.

1989

1989 -- Jan 4 -- US Department of Energy estimates that it could cost $53 billion to $92 billion to clean up radioactive and chemical pollution at plants used to manufacture nuclear bombs. (" Atomic Cleanup Is Seen Costing U.S. $92 Billion" New York Times, Jan. 5, 1989, p. 16).

1989 -- March 3 -- Euopean nations begin ban on ozone - depleting chemicals.

 

1989 -- March 24. Exxon Valdez oil tanker runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilling 11 million gallons. Exxon Valdez was headed for California from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Terminal at Valdez, Alaska. The vessel ran aground on Bligh Reef, in Prince William Sound. State of Alaska maintains an information page about the incident.

1989 - June 6 - Greepeace reports that accidents involving US and Russian ships have left at least 50 nuclear warheads and nine nuclear reactors on the ocan floors since 1956. Some 1,276 nuclear and non-nuclear accidents, and another 1,000 accidents, amounted to one major peacetime accident per week. (NYT)

1989 -- May 6 -- Amazon Declaration signed by Brazil, Bolivia Columbia, ,Ecuacor, Suriname, Peru, Guyana and Venezuela. The declaration endorses the work of the Amazonia Special Environmental Commission and says: "We reiterate that our Amazon heritage must be preserved through the rational use of the resources of the region, so that present and future generations may benefit from this legacy of nature."

1989 - May 30 - FBI arrests four Earth First! members, including founder David Forman, for trying to topple power lines associated with the Central Arizona irrigation project.

1989 -- Khargo 5 oil spill Canary Islands, Atlantic Ocean.

1989 -- Court order forbids further diversion of streams feeding Lake Mono in California.

1989 -- Louisiana Toxic March protesting conditions in “Cancer Alley”( from Baton Rouge to New Orleans).

1989 -- Congress votes to halt timbering in Alaska's Tsongass National Forest, the last undisturbed temperate rain forest in the U.S.

1989 -- July 20 -- The new Hungarian government abandons the Nagymoros dam project on the Danube River, alleging that it entailed grave risk to the environment and the water supply of Budapest. A 1997 World Court decision called on Slovakia and Hungary to live up to their treaty to build the dam, but also to modify the treaty and the dam design as needed for environmental protection.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1989: