Green Issues and Debates: An A-to-Z Guide

(Volume numbers refer to previous volumes in the Green Society series. The articles listed within each of the preceding 11 volumes appear in this volume on Green Issues and Debates and are also discussed further in the corresponding volumes.)

Volume I. Green Energy

Biomass

Carbon Sequestration

Carbon Tax

Carbon Trading/Emissions Trading

Ethanol

Green Pricing

Nuclear Power (Energy)

Oil

Oil Sands

Solar Energy (Cities)

Wind Power

Yucca Mountain

Volume II. Green Politics

Anarchism

Capitalism

Citizen Juries

Commodification

Common Property Theory

Ecocapitalism

Ecological Imperialism

Ecosocialism

Ecotax

Environmental Justice (Business)

International Whaling Commission (IWC)

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)

North–South Debate

Not in My Backyard (NIMBY)

Precautionary Principle (Uncertainty)

Resource Curse

Skeptical Environmentalism

Tragedy of the Commons

Utilitarianism

Volume III. Green Food

Agribusiness

Animal Welfare

Aquaculture

Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt)

Ecolabeling

Fisheries

Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)

Hunting

Irradiation

Nanotechnology and Food

Organic Farming

Pesticides

Roundup Ready Crops

Volume IV. Green Cities

Sustainable Development (Business)

Adaptation

Asthma (Cities)

Biofuels (Cities)

Carbon Trading (Cities)

Green Jobs (Cities)

[Page xii]Mitigation

Solar Energy (Cities)

Sustainable Development (Cities)

Volume V. Green Business

Biofuels (Business)

Biotechnology

Brownfield Redevelopment

Carbon Trading/Emissions Trading (Business)

Certified Products

Ecotourism

Environmental Justice (Business)

Green-Collar Jobs

Socially Responsible Investing

Sustainable Development (Business)

Volume VI. Green Consumerism

Carbon Emissions (Personal Carbon Footprint)

Certified Products

Ecolabeling (Consumer Perspective)

Genetically Modified Products

Kyoto Protocol

Organic Consumerism

Pesticides and Fertilizers (Home)

Volume VII. Education

Education, Federal Green Initiatives

Education, State Green Initiatives

Environmental Education Debate

Green Community-Based Learning

Sustainability in TV Shows

Volume VIII. Ethics & Philosophy

Agriculture

Animal Ethics

Anthropocentrism Versus Biocentrism

Ecofascism

Environmental Justice (Ethics and Philosophy)

Ethical Sustainability and Development

Gaia Hypothesis

Green Altruism

Intergenerational Justice

Intrinsic Value Versus Use Value

Organic Trend

Precautionary Principle (Ethics and Philosophy)

Utilitarianism Versus Anthropocentrism

Volume IX. Health

Alternative Energy

Antibiotic/Antibiotic Resistance

Antiseptics

Asthma (Health)

Biological Control of Pests

Genetically Engineered Crops

Healthcare Delivery

Health Insurance Reform

Hydroelectric Power

Nuclear Power (Health)

Volume X. Technology

Carbon Capture Technology

Carbon Market

Coal, Clean Technology

Nanotechnology

Volume XI. Culture

Antiglobalization

Corporate Social Responsibility

Earth Liberation Front (ELF)/Animal Liberation Front (ALF)

Green Anarchism

Green Jobs (Culture)

Individual Action Versus Collective Action

Nongovernmental Organizations

Organic Foods

Social Action

Veganism/Vegetarianism as Social Action

• Adaptation
• Agribusiness
• Agriculture
• Alternative Energy
• Anarchism
• Animal Ethics
• Animal Welfare
• Anthropocentrism Versus Biocentrism
• Antibiotic/Antibiotic Resistance
• Antiglobalization
• Antiseptics
• Aquaculture
• Asthma (Cities)
• Asthma (Health)
• Bacillus Thuringiensis (Bt)
• Biofuels (Business)
• Biofuels (Cities)
• Biological Control of Pests
• Biomass
• Biotechnology
• Brownfield Redevelopment
• Capitalism
• Carbon Capture Technology
• Carbon Emissions (Personal Carbon Footprint)
• Carbon Market
• Carbon Sequestration
• Carbon Tax
• Carbon Trading (Cities)
• Carbon Trading/Emissions Trading
• Carbon Trading/Emissions Trading (Business)
• Certified Products
• Citizen Juries
• Coal, Clean Technology
• Commodification
• Common Property Theory
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Earth Liberation Front (ELF)/Animal Liberation Front (ALF)
• Ecocapitalism
• Ecofascism
• Ecolabeling
• Ecolabeling (Consumer Perspective)
• Ecological Imperialism
• Ecosocialism
• Ecotax
• Ecotourism
• Education, Federal Green Initiatives
• Education, State Green Initiatives
• Environmental Education Debate
• Environmental Justice (Business)
• Environmental Justice (Ethics and Philosophy)
• Environmental Justice (Politics)
• Ethanol
• Ethical Sustainability and Development
• Fisheries
• Gaia Hypothesis
• Genetically Engineered Crops
• Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs)
• Genetically Modified Products
• Green Altruism
• Green Anarchism
[Page xiv]
• Green-Collar Jobs
• Green Community-Based Learning
• Green Jobs (Cities)
• Green Jobs (Culture)
• Green Pricing
• Healthcare Delivery
• Health Insurance Reform
• Horizontal Policy Integration
• Hunting
• Hydroelectric Power
• Hydropower
• Individual Action Versus Collective Action
• Intergenerational Justice
• International Whaling Commission (IWC)
• Intrinsic Value Versus Use Value
• Irradiation
• Kyoto Protocol
• Mitigation
• Nanotechnology
• Nanotechnology and Food
• Nongovernmental Organizations
• North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
• North–South Debate
• Not in My Backyard (NIMBY)
• Nuclear Power (Energy)
• Nuclear Power (Health)
• Oil
• Oil Sands
• Organic Consumerism
• Organic Farming
• Organic Foods
• Organic Trend
• Pesticides
• Pesticides and Fertilizers (Home)
• Precautionary Principle (Ethics and Philosophy)
• Precautionary Principle (Uncertainty)
• Resource Curse
• Roundup Ready Crops
• Skeptical Environmentalism
• Social Action
• Socially Responsible Investing
• Solar Energy (Cities)
• Sustainability in TV Shows
• Sustainable Development (Business)
• Sustainable Development (Cities)
• Sustainable Development (Politics)
• Tragedy of the Commons
• Utilitarianism
• Utilitarianism Versus Anthropocentrism
• Veganism/Vegetarianism as Social Action
• Vertical Policy Integration
• Wind Power
• Yucca Mountain

12,000–6,000 B.C.E.: During the Neolithic Revolution, early humans learn to domesticate plants and animals, developing agriculture and the beginnings of settlements in the Fertile Crescent and Indus River Valley.

1,000 B.C.E.: The first known consumption of fossil fuels occurs in China. Coal is unearthed and likely used to smelt copper in rudimentary blast furnaces.

c. 500 B.C.E.: Athens, Greece, establishes what may have been the first city dump in the Western world, accompanied by a ban against throwing garbage into the streets.

c. 1530: Commercial whaling begins as the Basques begin the pursuit of right whales in the North Atlantic, killing an estimated 25,000 to 40,000 whales over the next 80 years.

1833: English chemist and meteorologist Luke Howard describes the “urban heat island” effect in The Climate of London, noting that the city “partakes much of an artificial warmth, induced by its structure, by a crowded population, and the consumption of great quantities of fuel.”

1839: French physicist Becquerel discovers the photovoltaic effect, the process by which electromagnetic radiation is absorbed by matter, which in turn emits electrons, creating electricity.

1862: With much of the agricultural south in the United States not voting because of the Civil War, the U.S. creates the Department of Agriculture, which assumes the responsibility of promoting agriculture production and the land grant university system.

1863: The world's first subway opens in London, England.

1867: Karl Marx writes of commodification in Das Kapital.

1872: U.S. President Ulysses Grant signs a bill into law designating the area of Yellowstone as the world's first national park.

[Page xviii]1873: The first U.S. federal law against animal cruelty is passed. Called the “Twenty-Eight Hour Law,” it requires that “livestock transported across country be provided with water and rest at least once every 28 hours.”

1878: C.V. Riley, an entomologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, advocates the use of biological pest controls for farming, a method used today in organic farming.

1882: The world's first hydroelectric power station, the Vulcan Street Power Plant, is built in Appleton, Wisconsin.

1886: Swedish scientist Arrhenius speculates on the greenhouse effect and suggests that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere trap solar radiation in the form of heat.

1888: Charles F. Brush adapts the first large windmill to generate electricity in Cleveland, Ohio. Electricity-generating mills are coined “wind turbines.” General Electric later acquires Brush's company, Brush Electric.

1890: The Sempervirens Club, California's oldest land conservation organization, is founded.

1891: Baltimore inventor Clarence Kemp patents the first commercial solar water heater.

1892: British reformer Henry S. Salt, a socialist, pacifist, and vegetarian, publishes a landmark work on animal welfare, Animal Rights Considered in Relation to Social Progress.

1892: The Sierra Club is founded in the city of San Francisco by preservationist John Muir.

1905: Upton Sinclair publishes his novel The Jungle in serial format in the socialist magazine Appeal to Reason. Public outcry over the filthy conditions of the meatpacking industry portrayed in this novel led to passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906.

1906: U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signs the Pure Food and Drug Act, effectively creating the Food and Drug Administration.

1917: Article 27 of the Mexican constitution changes its land tenure forms, nationalizing many lands and subdividing many into a communal system of ejidos.

1918: The Save the Redwoods League forms in the United States for the purpose of purchasing the remaining redwood forests, which have been extensively harvested for lumber.

1920: In response to the perceived failures of existing federal laws to deal with mining of coal and oil resources, the United States passes the Mineral Leasing Act to regulate mining on public lands. The law governs deposits of coal, oil, gas, oil shale, phosphate, potash, sodium, and sulfur.

[Page xix]1934: The Taylor Grazing Act establishes grazing districts on public lands that have formerly been unregulated and grants leases to individuals to use them. The fees are deliberately set low and in general remain lower today than the fees charged for comparable private grazing land.

1939: Swiss chemist Paul Müller discovers that the synthetic chemical dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) is effective at killing insects. The chemical is widely used in the armed forces to control mosquitoes and lice and becomes popular in agriculture as well after World War II.

1942: Jerome Irving Rodale begins publication of Organic Farming and Gardening, popularizing the concept of organic food production as advocated by the British writers Sir Albert Howard and Lord Northbourne.

1946: The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling holds its first meeting in Washington, D.C., and sets quotas for whaling that are intended to allow the whaling industry to continue at reduced levels so that whales are not hunted to extinction.

1949: The International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling establishes the International Whaling Commission, which is intended to regulate whaling but has been beset by conflicts between nations with traditional whaling industries (e.g., Japan, Iceland, and Norway) and those that wish to impose a moratorium on all whaling.

1952: London, England, experiences a thermal inversion in December, which combined with air pollution from automobiles, factories, and coal-burning furnaces, blankets the city in smog. The smog is believed to have caused about 3,000 deaths.

1954: The introduction of highly industrialized fishing vessels into the codfish industry in the United States and Canada greatly increases the annual catch, causing a steady decline in the cod population to the point where, in 1977, it was determined that the number of spawning codfish off the coast of Newfoundland had decreased by 92 percent since 1962.

1956: The first victims of Minamata disease, caused by alkyl mercury poisoning from eating contaminated fish, are identified in Japan. Victims suffer from neurological impairments, including retardation, contorted limbs, and sensory disturbances. The source of the contamination is traced to the Chisso Company, which had been dumping industrial pollutants into Minamata Bay on the west coast of Kyushu Island.

1965: Scientist James Lovelock proposes the Gaia hypothesis.

1968: Bowling Green State University's Center for Environmental Programs is established.

1968: Garret Hardin publishes the Tragedy of the Commons in Science, which is widely cited by many environmentalists, but also criticized for its insistence that markets are the solution to all environmental problems.

[Page xx]1970: The University of Colorado becomes the first college to establish an Environmental Center.

1970: Norman Borlaug, father of the “green revolution,” which is credited with substantially increasing crop yield in the third world, wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Although few question that the green revolution saved millions of people from starvation, many particularly in more recent years have criticized Borlaug's reforms because they rely heavily on chemical fertilizers, irrigation, and seeds that must be purchased annually from multinational corporations or first-world research institutions, thus increasing corporate control of third-world agriculture and dependency on modern science.

1970: The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) is passed, requiring all federal agencies to compile and submit an Environmental Impact Statement.

1971: Frances Moore Lappé publishes Diet for a Small Planet. Lappé advocates for the adoption of a vegetarian diet, both for reasons of health and because of the much greater resources required to produce meat rather than vegetables and grains.

1972: The Environmental Protection Agency bans the use of DDT in the United States.

1973: The Arab Oil Embargo begins as a response to the U.S. decision to supply the Israeli military during the Yom Kippur War.

1973: Ernst Friedrich Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered criticizes the assumption that economic development requires adoption of large-scale Western technologies and a lifestyle based on acquisition of consumer goods.

1973: Philosopher Arne Naess coins the term deep ecology to describe a philosophical orientation that focuses not only on reducing pollution but also recognizes that nature has a significant intrinsic value.

1974: The U.S. Department of Energy forms a branch dedicated to national research and development of solar energy—the Solar Energy Research Institute.

1975: The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), signed in 1973, comes into force. The convention's purpose is to end international trade in endangered or threatened animal and plant species or products made from them and requires signatories to implement domestic laws (such as the Endangered Species Act in the United States) to carry out the convention's principles.

1975: Jim Hightower coins the term McDonaldization in his book Eat Your Heart Out and warns of the danger of international corporations such as McDonald's destroying local cuisines as well as driving small farms and restaurants out of business.

1976: Wes and Dana Jackson found the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas, to develop sustainable agriculture practices. The institute includes both a school and an agricultural research station that investigate alternatives to industrial agricultural practices, such as monoculture and extensive use of pesticides and herbicides.

[Page xxi]1976: Bioethics professor Peter Singer publishes Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals.

1977: The First Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education is held in Tbilisi, Georgia.

1978: Supertanker Amoco Cadiz runs aground off the coast of France, emptying the entire cargo of 1.6 million barrels of oil into the water. The largest oil spill in history, it is estimated that $250 million in damages occurred.

1979: A partial core meltdown occurs at the Three Mile Island nuclear generating station, releasing radioactive gases into the Pennsylvania air. This near-catastrophe draws attention to the dangers involved in nuclear power generation and halts construction of new nuclear power facilities in the United States.

1980: Alex Pacheco and Ingrid Newkirk found People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to protect animal rights. Philosophers such as Tom Regan and Peter Singer heavily influence the PETA founders, in particular that their belief that “speciesism,” or the belief that man is superior to all other species, is incorrect.

1983: The World Commission on Environment and Development, commonly known as the Brundtland Commission, is held.

1984: An accident at a Union Carbide pesticide-producing plan in Bhopal, India, releases a toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate, causing more than 2,000 deaths immediately and at least 2,000 more in ensuing years.

1985: A group of activists found the Rainforest Action Network in San Francisco, California, with the purpose of protecting the world's rainforests and the people who live in them from environmental destruction. Their first major action is a boycott of the American fast food chain Burger King, which at that time imported much of its beef from Central and South America, where rainforest destruction was hastened by the economic incentive of clearing the forest and turning it into grazing land for cattle.

1985: Robyn Van En coins the term community-supported agriculture and establishes the first collective in the United States in Massachusetts. In this system, community members buy shares of a farmer's crops in advance and receive their portion of the crops, which are delivered as they are harvested. This shifts some of the risk of crop loss, as well as the benefits if a growing season is particularly productive, from the farmer to members of the collective.

1986: Chernobyl, Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, becomes the site of the worst nuclear disaster in history.

1986: The world's largest solar thermal facility is commissioned in Kramer Junction, California.

1986: Arcigola Slow Food, the forerunner of the international Slow Food movement, is founded in Italy as a protest against standardized food produced by international corporations such as McDonald's as well as a celebration of local products and traditions.

[Page xxii]1986: Historian Alfred Cosby writes about ecological imperialism, describing how ecosystems were transformed through the colonization of the Americas.

1987: The United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice issues a study demonstrating that the location of toxic waste sites is more closely related to the race of neighborhood residents than to either income or social class.

1987: Burger King announces that it will no longer import beef from rainforest areas.

1987: American activist Dave Foreman publishes Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching, which advocates sabotage to prevent environmentally destructive development and other commercial activities. Many of Foreman's suggested tactics are illegal, including driving metal spikes into trees to prevent their being logged, sabotaging earth-moving equipment such as bulldozers, removing surveyor's stakes, and pulling down power lines. The book's title refers to The Monkey Wrench Gang, a 1975 novel by Edward Abbey, which called for individuals to take direct action to halt the destruction of wilderness.

1988: Negative publicity about polluted beaches in New York and New Jersey leads to passage of the Ocean Dumping Ban Act, which takes force in 1991. The act prohibits dumping industrial waste and sewage sludge into the ocean and is more stringent than previous laws, which allowed some dumping as long as it did not seriously degrade the marine environment.

1988: The Dutch development agency Solidaridad introduces fair-trade coffee in the Netherlands under the label “Max Havelaar” (referring to a fictional character who opposed exploitation of coffee pickers).

1988: Ron Arnold and Alan Gottlieb publish The Wise Use Agenda, which states that the opposition of the Wise Use Movement in the western United States led to increased government regulation of commercial uses of public lands.

1989: The worst oil spill in American history at the time occurs when the supertanker ship Exxon Valdez grounds on a reef and spills more than 11 million gallons of oil into Prince William Sound near Valdez, Alaska.

1989: Kalle Lasn founds the Canadian advocacy group Adbusters, which popularizes “Buy Nothing Day,” corresponding to the biggest day of the U.S. holiday shopping season.

1990: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the Pfizer product Chy-Max chymosin, a genetically modified version of rennet used in cheese. Currently, 60 percent of U.S. cheeses are produced using genetically modified chymosins.

1990: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases its first report on the status of climate science.

1990: The Organic Foods Production Act, which sets national standards for the production, handling, and labeling of organic food, is passed.

[Page xxiii]1991: The Flavr Savr tomato, the world's first genetically engineered food crop, is developed by Calgene and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

1991: U.S. President George H. W. Bush incorporates the Solar Energy Research Institute into the new National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Its mission is to develop renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies and practices, advance related science and engineering, and transfer knowledge and innovations to addressing the nation's energy and environmental goals by using scientific discoveries to create market-viable alternative energy solutions.

1992: Under President Clinton, the Energy Policy Act of 1992 is passed by U.S. Congress. It is organized under several titles enacting legislation on such subjects as energy efficiency, conservation, and management; electric motor vehicles; coal power and clean coal; renewable energy; alternative fuels; natural gas imports and exports; and various others. Among the new directives is a section that designates Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a permanent disposal site for radioactive materials from nuclear power plants. It also reforms the Public Utility Holding Company Act to help prevent an oligopoly and provide further tax credits for using renewable energy.

1992: The Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro results in the document “Agenda 21,” which calls for national governments to adapt strategies for sustainable development and to cooperate with nongovernmental organizations and other countries in implementing them.

1992: The Environmental Protection Agency introduces the voluntary Energy Star program to help consumers evaluate the energy efficiency of common products. Specific standards vary by product, but most Energy Star products represent an improvement of at least 20–30 percent in energy efficiency over the traditional version of the same product.

1992: The European Union introduces the European Ecolabel to help consumers identify products—from paper to televisions to paint—that have relatively low impact on the environment over the life cycle of the product.

1993: The U.S. Green Building Council is founded as a nonprofit trade organization that promotes self-sustaining building design, construction, and operation. The council develops the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system and organizes Greenbuild, a conference promoting environmentally responsible materials and sustainable architecture techniques.

1993: U.S. President Bill Clinton's administration suggests a tax on energy consumption per British thermal unit (btu), which is widely criticized.

1994: U.S. President Bill Clinton signs Executive Order 12898, requiring federal agencies to determine the impact that environmental degradation has on low-income communities.

1994: The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) takes effect, and rebels in Chiapas, Mexico, choose the moment to launch their counterinsurgency to protest the impacts of NAFTA on rural and indigenous Mexico.

[Page xxiv]1996: Monsanto plants the first commercial fields with the Roundup Ready soybean, the first widely adopted commercial genetically modified crop in the United States. The beans are engineered to resist the common herbicide glyphosate, which can therefore be sprayed on the fields without damaging the soybean crop. By 2009, more than 90 percent of soybeans grown in the United States are engineered to be herbicide resistant.

1996: William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel develop the concept of the “ecological footprint,” which signifies all the resources used by a particular species, in their book Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth.

1997: The term affluenza is introduced in a documentary of the same name to refer to a cycle the filmmakers see in contemporary Western society: the unbounded pursuit of material possessions that provide ever-decreasing satisfaction but produce the desire to accumulate still more goods.

1997: The Fair-Trade Labeling Organizations International is founded in Germany with the goals of bringing together disparate fair-trade organizations and harmonizing standards for fair-trade certification.

1997: The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes draft rules for organic food production that include genetically modified organisms (GMOs), sewage sledge, and irradiation, drawing a significant amount of protest from consumers and food groups.

1997: The Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement linked to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that aims to reduce or prevent global warming, is adopted. Under the protocol, which goes into effect in 2005, most industrialized countries agree to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. Some were given specific targets, and some were given the goal of reducing their emissions to 1990 levels, while others were allowed to reduce their levels. The protocol also allows countries to trade carbon emissions in order to meet their goals.

1998: Great Britain announces that by 2008, more than 60 percent of new housing starts will be on brownfield grounds; that is, they will reuse previously developed lands, such as abandoned commercial developments, that are underutilized or neglected.

1999: A study by Cone Millennial Cause finds that most (89 percent) of Americans age 13–25 would be willing to switch to a brand associated with a “good cause” and that many would prefer to work for a socially responsible company.

2000: New York City introduces Green Building Tax Credits, which offer tax breaks to developers whose buildings meet energy efficiency standards.

2000: The Biomass Research and Development Board is created as part of a U.S. Congress act attempting to coordinate federal research and development of bio-based fuels obtained by living (as opposed to long-dead fossil fuels) biological material, such as wood or vegetable oils. Biofuel industries begin to expand in Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

[Page xxv]2001: The U.S. Green Building Council founds the Green Building Certification Institute to certify Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) professionals who are qualified to evaluate the sustainability of buildings.

2002: The Center for Food Safety publishes Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, a collection of essays criticizing the effects of industrial agriculture, which is the norm in the United States, on the environment and on human health. Specific criticisms include overuse of pesticides, loss of topsoil, use of genetically engineered species, loss of agricultural diversity, and loss of family farms.

2002: William McDonough and Michael Braungart popularize the term cradle to cradle, which was introduced by Walter Stahel in the 1970s. Cradle to cradle refers to the principle that companies should be responsible for recycling materials from their products after they are discarded.

2004: Bjørn Lomborg writes The Skeptical Environmentalist.

2005: NanoJury UK, a citizen jury debating the risks and merits of nanotechnology, offers a verdict on the technology's future.

2005: The European Union Emission Trading Scheme, a carbon-trading scheme involving 25 of the then-27 European countries, officially begins.

2005: In Lost Child in the Woods, Richard Louv coins the term nature deficit disorder to describe how children are developing behavioral problems as a result of spending less time outdoors than previous generations.

2005: The Energy Policy Act is passed by U.S. Congress and signed into law by George W. Bush, making sweeping reforms in energy legislation, mostly in the way of tax deductions and subsidies. Loans are guaranteed for innovative technologies that avoid greenhouse gases, and alternative energy resources such as wind, solar, and clean coal production are given multimillion-dollar subsidies.

2006: The United Nations releases a study showing that the U.S. meat industry has a larger impact on global warming than any other industry.

2006: The New Oxford American Dictionary selects “carbon neutral” as its word of the year.

2006: Walmart launches an initiative requiring its suppliers to reduce packaging to the lowest possible levels.

2007: San Francisco, California, bans polystyrene foam (Styrofoam) containers for takeout food, requiring that containers used for that purpose be compostable or recyclable.

2007: The College of the Atlantic announces that it will become the first “carbon-neutral” university.

[Page xxvi]2007: The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 is passed by U.S. Congress and signed by George W. Bush. Its stated purposes are “to move the United States toward greater energy independence and security, to increase the production of clean, renewable fuels, to protect consumers, to increase the efficiency of products, buildings and vehicles, to promote research on and deploy greenhouse gas capture and storage options, and to improve the energy performance of the federal government,” as well as various other goals. Included in the new provisions is a requirement of government and public institutions to lower fossil fuel use 80 percent by 2020.

2007: In the U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, the court rules 5–4 that the EPA has the legal authority to regulate the emission of heat-trapping gases in automobile emissions.

2007: The state of California enacts laws that spur the creation of its Green Chemistry Initiative.

2007: California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger establishes the low-carbon fuel standard, which aims to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels by 10 percent by 2020.

2008: President George W. Bush signs the Higher Education Sustainability Act (HESA) into law.

2009: Amid a global recession, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is one of the inaugural acts signed by President Barack Obama. It makes provisions for job creation, tax relief, and infrastructure investment, but is also heavily focused on energy efficiency and science. Multibillion-dollar funding is appropriated toward energy-efficient building practices, green jobs, electric and hybrid vehicles, and modernizing the nation's electric grid.

2009: President Barack Obama halts 20-year-old plans to make Yucca Mountain the national repository of nuclear waste.

2010: Three administrative Nuclear Regulatory Commission judges ruled that President Barack Obama did not have the power to close the Yucca Mountain repository unilaterally. It ruled that doing so would require another act of Congress.

2010: The largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history occurs as an explosion rocks the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, spilling approximately 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico and severely harming the region's environment.

March 2011: The nuclear debate is reignited around the world as a result of the Japanese nuclear emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is located about 150 miles north of heavily populated Tokyo. The leak of radiation, brought on as a result of Japan's 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami, prompted safety reviews of nuclear power plants in China and the European Union. In the United States, President Barack Obama asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do a “comprehensive review” of domestic plants in light of the events in Japan.