Vol. 10, Issue 11, Part B (2024)

Abstract
Environmental politics in the United States got off to a rough start in the 1960s. It is now hard to imagine a time when environmental issues were controversial. But denial of the seriousness of problems was the norm rather than the exception until recently. Oil was cheap in the U.S and wasteful use of energy in American industry was routine. Awareness of potential problems grew in the 1960s as smog hung over the air above major cities such as Los Angeles, radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing spread throughout the Midwest, and pesticides contaminated agricultural products. The publication of Rachel Carson's best-selling book Silent Spring in 1962 was the first turning point in the rise of environmentalism. Carson argued that humans and nature were interdependent. The arguments she presented in this famous book eventually led to the reduction of DDT use. But Carson, who died of cancer two years after the book's publication, was widely dismissed as a hysterical woman by interests hostile to environmental regulation.