Quick questions on Environmental movements (QCE Modern History Unit 2)

Documented the ecological damage caused by DDT and other persistent pesticides. Launched modern environmentalism. DDT banned in the US (1972), in many countries thereafter, except for limited use against malarial mosquitoes.

Paul Ehrlich's "The Population Bomb" (1968) warned of overpopulation. The Club of Rome's "The Limits to Growth" (1972) modelled resource depletion.

First Earth Day; about $20$ million Americans participated. Senator Gaylord Nelson's initiative. Established environmentalism as a mass political force.

Created under Nixon. Clean Air Act (1970, expanded 1990). Clean Water Act (1972).

First major UN conference on the environment. Led to creation of UN Environment Programme.

Founded in Vancouver to protest US nuclear testing in Alaska. Became the most prominent international environmental NGO.

Whitlam government established the Department of the Environment and Conservation (1972).

Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission flooded the unique pink quartzite-beach lake to create a reservoir. The campaign to save Lake Pedder lost, but it produced the United Tasmania Group (1972), the world's first green party. Pedder became the lost touchstone of the Australian movement; campaigns to restore it continue.

Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission proposed damming the Franklin River. The Tasmanian Wilderness Society (Bob Brown) organised a mass blockade from December 1982. $1\,272$ arrests.

Subsequent campaigns over the Daintree rainforest (Queensland) and Kakadu uranium mining (Northern Territory) used similar tactics with mixed success.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established by the World Meteorological Organization and UNEP. First assessment report (1990).

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change signed.

First international agreement with binding emissions targets for developed countries. Took effect 2005. The US never ratified.

Universal agreement on national emissions reductions; aim to limit warming to well below 2°C. The United States withdrew in 2017 (Trump) and rejoined in 2021 (Biden).

Howard government refused to ratify Kyoto. Rudd government ratified Kyoto (December 2007); Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme blocked in 2009-2010. Gillard government's Clean Energy Act 2011 (carbon tax) was repealed by Abbott in 2014.