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1990 - 1999

1990 -- United Nations report on climate change warns that global temperature rise might be as much as 2 degrees F in 35 years, recommends reducing CO2 emissions worldwide.

1990 -- April 20 -- Twentieth Anniversary of Earth Day -- 140 nations celebrate.

1990 -- May 24 -- Car bomb maims environmental activist Judi Beri in Oakland, California. Beri was recruiting college students for Redwood Summer, a campaign of nonviolent mass protests against corporate liquidation logging. FBI agents accused Beri of knowingly transporting the bomb, but Beri said the bomb had been planted by timber companies who intended to kill them. Local prosecutors refused to indict Beri due to a lack of evidence. A lawsuit against the FBI for its role in the bombing was filed in 1997.

1990 -- Gallup poll finds 76 percent of Americans call themselves "environmentalists."

1990 -- EPA administrator William Reilly establishes Environmental Equity Work Group to deal with environmental justice issues.

1990 -- London Protocols on ozone agreed to by 93 countries. This is a tightening of the 1987 Montreal Protocols. It calls for total global phaseout of CFCs, halon and carbon tetrachloride by 2000, of methyl chloroform by 2005 and a program to help developing countries phase out CFCs.

1990 -- Clean Air Act amendments strengthen rules on SOx and NOx emissions from electric power plants helping reduce acid rain.

1990 -- War in Kuwait and Iraq creates environmental disaster with oil spills and depleted uranium bullets. Childhood cancers rise dramatically in southern Iraq. See Environmental and Economic Repercussions of the Persian Gulf War in the Trade Environment Database at American University.

1990 -- Southern Christian Leadership Conference survey finds that 34 % of African American church members in five cities believe that AIDS is an artificial virus and a form of genocide, and 44% believed that the government is not telling the truth about AIDS. These results show the long term effects of environmental racism and the breech of faith over public health issues, for example, in the "Tuskegee" experiment (see 1972).

1990 -- Youth for Environmental Sanity (YES) formed by Ocean Robbins and Ryan Eliason.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1990:

  • Bunyan Bryant, Environmental Advocacy. Concepts, Issues and Dilemmas. Ann Arbor: Caddo Gap, 1990.
  • Robert D. Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality. Boulder: Westview, 1990.
  • Francesca Lyman with James J. MacKenzie, The Greenhouse Trap: What We're Doing to the Atmosphere and How We Can Slow Global Warming (A World Resources Institute Guide to the Environment) Beacon Press, 1990.
  • Chellis Glendenning When Technology Wounds: The Human Consequences of Progress,

1991

1991 -- UN Antarctica treaty prohibits mining, limits pollution and protects animal species.

1991 -- Nigeria's Movement for the Survival of the Ogani People founded by Ken Saro-Wiwa in reaction to Shell Oil Co. drilling and extensive pollution in Niger River delta. The country's military dictators respond with threats, intimidation, arrest, and, in 1995, execution.

1991 - Nov 27 - Japan vows to shut down drift net fishing, a decision seen as a major victory by marine conservation groups.

1991 - December 30, Failure to translate documents into Spanish excluded citizens from environmental review in El Pueblo para el Aire y Agua Limpio v. County of Kings, a judge rules, overturning the permit for a toxic waste incinerator. Case was brought by Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1991:

  • Steve Chase, ed. Defending the Earth. A Dialogue Between Murray Bookchin and Dave Foreman. Boston: South End Press, 1991.
  • Joan DeBardeleben, To breathe free : Eastern Europe's environmental crisis, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991
  • Lester R. Brown, Christopher Flavin, Sandra Postel, Saving the planet : how to shape an environmentally sustainable global economy
    W.W. Norton, 1991
  • Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Healing the planet : strategies for resolving the environmental crisis, Addison-Wesley, 1991
  • Dave Foreman Confessions of an Eco-Warrior
  • Amory Lovins, Energy Unbound: A Fable for America's Future, Random House

1992

1992 -- February -- NASA finds record-high concentrations of chlorine monoxide in stratosphere. Ozone over northern parts of U.S., Canada, Europe and Russia could be depleted in late winter/early spring by as much as 40%.

1992 --June 3-14 -- Earth Summit is held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. The conference focuses on five issue areas:

1993

1993 -- Jan. 4 -- 300,000 Ogoni men, women, and children take to Nigeria's streets in a massive protest of the destruction of their homelands by Shell Oil. Co. The date has been celebrated as Ogoni Day ever since. Soon after the protests, Nigerian military forces began attacking Ogoni villages. Thousands were killed, and thousands more have been made homeless. By 1994, leader Ken Sara Wiwa was arrested. More information:

1993 -- National Biological Survey (now Service) established in Dept. of Interior.

1993 -- April -- Korean Foundation for Environmental Movement founded by Choi Yul, a South Korean environmental activist. Yul donated all the prize money from 1995 Goldman Environmental Award towards building a citizens' environmental center in Seoul. The national center, educational center, information center(CICE), editorial room etc are housed in it. Some 25 local branches work with 25,000 members in various fields such as anti-nuclear power movement, seve-our sea campaigns, educational activities, and citizens's watch programs.

1993 -- President Clinton signs order restricting logging in old growth forests.

1993 -- Moratorium of toxic waste incineration in US.

1993 -- National Environmental Trust (originally environmental information center) founded with funding by Pew Charitable Trusts.

1993 -- Marjorie Stoneman Douglas is honored by President Bill Clinton for her work to save the Florida Everglades (see 1948).

1993 -- Dennis Hayes, co-founder of Earth Day and former director of the Solar Energy Research Institution, becomes chair of the Bullitt Foundation.

1993 -Oct 18 - Greenpeace observers photograph Russian ship TNT-27 dumping 900 tons of low level radioactive waste off the east coast of Russia in the Sea of Japan, setting off an international diplomatic rift between Japan and Russia.

1993 -- “Toxic Racism” documentary produced for US Public Broadcasting Service.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1993:

  • Robert D. Bullard, Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots South End Press
  • Al Gore, Earth in the balance : ecology and the human spirit Plume
  • Daniel Faber, Environment under fire : imperialism and the ecological crisis in Central America, Monthly Review Press
  • Gary C. Bryner, Blue skies, green politics : the Clean Air Act of 1990, CQ Press
  • Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring, Island Press
  • National Committee on the Environment, Choosing a sustainable future : the report of the National Commission on the Environment, Island Press
  • Clive Ponting, A Green History of the World, Penguin Group USA
  • George B. Schaller, The Last Panda. University of Chicago Press
  • Philip Schabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire , Island Press
  • Scott Slovik, ed., Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers, Macmillan

1994

1994 -- March 25 -- Basel Convention approved by most industrial nations. Convention calls for total and immediate ban on international shipments of hazardous waste from the industrial world to developing nations. US industry opposition stalled full implementation of the treaty . See Basel Action Network page.

1994 --Lead in human blood declines: Study shows that US blood-lead levels declined by 78 percent from 1978 to 1991 during leaded gasoline phase-out. Meanwhile, American Academy of Pediatrics study shows direct relationship between lead exposure and IQ deficits in children.

1994 -- Climate Change Warning: United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report organized by 78 lead authors and 400 additional contributors, with an additional 500 scientists commenting on early drafts. Report warns of severe long term impacts from greenhouse gas buildup.

1994 -- September -- Ugandan journalist Ndyakira Amooti helps two American undercover wildlife agents mount a sting operation at Entebbe airport. His 1996 Goldman Prize citation notes that he put himself at great personal risk and "exposed the smuggling of endangered chimpanzees and African Great Grey parrots - both endangered species protected by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) - by airport personnel, game officers and businessmen".

1994 -- North American Free Trade Agreement debate shows differences of opinion among mainstream environmental groups. Environmental Defense Fund and National Wildlife Federation support treaty mostly because of economic benefits to Mexico, which could help encourage environmental protection. Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth oppose the treaty because there are no safeguards for environmental protection.

1994 -- Women who lived near large chemical plants on Long Island run a greater risk of developing breast cancer after menopause, a New York State Health Department said. The risk is about equal to that of having a family history of breast cancer. (April 13, New York Times, p.1)

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1994

  • Alfred W. Crosby, Germs, Seeds & Animals : Studies In Ecological History, 1994
  • Robert Bullard, Dumping in Dixie: Class and Environmental Quality, 1994
  • Walter Levy, ed., Green Perspectives: Thinking about Writing about Nature and the Environment, Addison Wesley Longman, 1994.
  • Dixy Lee Ray with Lou Guzzo, Environmental overkill : whatever happened to common sense? HarperPerennial, 1994

1995

1995 -- Environmentalism is "one of the most successful contemporary movements in the US and Western Europe," according to Angela Mertig and Riley Dunlap in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research ("Public Approval of Environmental Protection..." IJPOR 7, no 2, 1995 p.145).

1995 -- January -- Republicans control US Congress for the first time in decades; attack on environmentalism is a first priority.

1995 - April 30 - Greenpeace activists occupy a Shell company North Sea offshore oil rig called the Brent Spar. Shell had planned to scuttle the rig in deep water off Scotland but had to abandon those plans, and scrap the rig on shore, when a Eurpean boycott against Shell cut into the company's image and profits. Shell backed down on June 20. The pro-business Wall Street Journal observes on July 9:

"For Greenpeace, the Brent Spar shows that high-profile cases, properly framed and easily explained, can ignite widespread public interest, especially if the news media get plenty of good photo opportunities. It also shows that economic warfare may be the best way to wage eco-warfare. The attention-grabbing tactics helped spark a boycott against Shell that cut sharply into gasoline sales and pushed the company to reverse course."

1995 -- June 23 -- The World Bank and international conservation groups (such as the IUCN) announce a plan to establish 155 marine protection areas around the world.

1995 -- August -- The US government releases its final report on human-radiation experiments from World War II through the mid-1970s. An estimated 16,000 men, women and children had been subjects in 435 different radiation experiments by the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission.

1995 -- September 12 -- The World Meteorological Organization reports that the hole in the Earth's ozone layer was expanding at a record rate. The good news, repor5ted by a team of researchers led by MIT's Ronald G. Prinn in Science magazine (July 14), was that the ozone - depleting chemical methyl chloroform had declined to 120 parts per trillion molecules of air in 1994, from a high of 150 parts per trillion in 1990.

1995 --Paul J. Crutzen (Max Plank Institute, Germany) Mario Molina (MIT) and F. Sherwood Rowland (UC Irvine) win Nobel prize for their work on ozone depletion and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to Joseph Rotblat, a British physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb but went on to campaign against nuclear weapons. The prize also went to the antinuclear group he headed, the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.

1995 -- Nov. 10. Nigerian government executes journalist and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other environmentalists. They had been active in fighting pollution from Shell Oil Co. in the Ogani homeland. International protests of Shell activities continues. See Ogoni and Nigeria Conflict over Oil and also the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People page by the Sierra Club. Many outraged people in the developing world have not forgotten the oil company's role in this tragedy. Sara-Wiwo's last words:

"Lord, take my soul, but the struggle continues."

1995 -- November -- Two to three tons of sodium leak from secondary cooling system of JapanŐs Monju prototype fast-breeder nuclear reactor in an accident.

1995 -- Wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park in the US.

1995 -- Dec. 21 -- Occidental Chemical Corp. agrees to pay $129 million to the federal government "superfund" to cover toxic waste cleanup costs at Love Canal (Niagara Falls, NY).

1995 -- Dec. 31-- Loggers win fight to resume logging of old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Republicans in Congress pass legislation allowing logging to resume after Clinton and minority democrats tried to block it in order to protect wildlife and water quality.


ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1995:

  • Stephanie Mills, In Service of the Wild: Restoring and Reinhabiting Damaged Land.
  • Bill McKibben, Hope, Human and Wild: True Stories of Living Lightly on the Earth Little Brown & Company
  • Jonathan Harr, A Civil Action Knopf Publishing Group  -- The book concerns a hard fought 1986 environmental lawsuit between citizens of Woburn Mass. and W.R. Grace, a chemical company. The book becomes a best seller and a movie starring John Travolta and Robert Duvall. The Grace website (which comes up first on a Google search) says Harr was a partisan for the plaintiff's positions. Harvard's Berkman Center has a web site, The Lessons from Woburn.
  • William O. Dwyer, Earth's Eleventh Hour: Environmental Readings from the Washington Post Writers Group, Allyn Bacon, 1995
  • Dan O'Neill, The Firecracker Boys, St. Martin's Griffin, 1995. Details Edward Teller's attempt to use nuclear weapons for geographic engineering in Alaska. The idea was so scientifically bizarre that it created a wave of environmental activism in Alaska.

1996

1996 -- World Bank joins World Health Organization and others in calling for global phaseout of leaded gasoline. The report links public health with economics and notes that the health costs of leaded gasoline are far higher than the benefits to a few refiners and gasoline distributors.

1996 --Lead poisoning is linked to anti-social behavior in a study by Dr. Herbert Needleman, a psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and caps a long line of studies about physical and behavioral problems caused by leaded gasoline and lead paint. "I'm not saying that lead exposure is the cause of delinquency. It is a cause and one with the biggest handle to prevention." He explained: "Lead is a brain poison that interferes with the ability to restrain impulses. It's a life experience which gets into biology and increases a child's risk for doing bad things." ( Aggressiveness and Delinquency In Boys Is Linked to Lead in Bones by Jane Brody, Feb. 7, 1996, New York Times.)

1996 -- EPA air pollution report says sulfur dioxide emissions declined by 40% between 1970 and 1990. The report also claims smog, carbon monoxide and ozone levels are down since passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1996:

  • William Cronon, Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, Norton
  • Gregg Easterbrook, A Moment on the Earth: The Coming Age of Environmental Optimism
    Penguin Books
  • Mark Neuzil and William Kovarik, Mass Media & Environmental Conflict Sage
  • Ed Smeloff, Amory Lovins, Reinventing Electric Utilities: Competition, Citizen Action and Clean Power, Island Press

1997

1997 -- March -- Fire and explosion at the state-run Power Reactor and Nuclear Fuel Development Corporation reprocessing plant at Tokaimura contaminated at least 35 workers.

1997, June 10 -- a group of Pehuenche indians occupy Chile's Indigenous Affairs Bureau and Environmental Protection Board to protest the licensing of the Ralco Dam on Chile's Bio-Bio River, saying "The Chilean government has once again shown its colonizing mentality by not respecting our people or the law."

1997 June 25 --Jacques Cousteau, oceanographer, explorer and environmental activist, dies. (b. June 11, 1910)

1997-- Dec. 10 -- Julia Butterfly Hill climbs a 180 foot California Coast Redwood tree in defiance of loggers. She spends two years in the tree as a protest against redwood logging.

1997, Dec 11 -- Kyoto Protocol adopted by US and 121 other nations, but not ratified by U.S. Congress. American industry predicts "disaster" if CO2 reductions are enforced, but environmentalists are dissatisfied with weak goals of the treaty. For the lastest, see UN Intergovernmental panel on Climate Change pages.

1997 -- Act Now, Apologize Later by 23-year-old Sierra Club president Adam Werbach notes environmentalists can be placed in a variety of categories: "druids" who defend nature for its spiritual values; polar-fleecers who want to preserve natural areas for recreational values; apocalyptics who are concerned about the destruction of the planet; eco-opportunists engaging in lobbying, litigation and politics; eco-entrepreneurs who see economic opportunities in environmental protection. "I don't care why someone cares about the environment -- Only that they do," he writes.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1997:

  • Adam Werbach, Act Now, Apolgize Later, Sierra Club
  • Stephen Bocking , Ecologists and environmental politics : a history of contemporary ecology, Yale University Press
  • Joel Simon, Endangered Mexico : an environment on the edge, Sierra Club Books
  • Lois Gibbs, Dying from Dioxin: A Citizen's Guide to Reclaiming Our Health and Rebuilding Democracy
  • Brian Tokar, Earth for sale : reclaiming ecology in the age of corporate greenwash, South End Press
  • Stephanie Mills, Turning Away from Technology: A New Vision for the 21st Century Sierra Club Books

1998

1998 -- Sept. 17-- David "Gypsy" Chain is killed by a tree taken down by the Pacific Lumber/Maxxam Corporation. Chain was in the forest protesting the destruction of old-growth redwood trees.

1998 -- November -- Nearly 3,000 tons of Taiwanese toxic waste were dumped in a field in the southern port of Sihanoukville., Cambodia.

1998, December 14 -- Morris K. Udall, former congressman and defender of the environment, dies.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1998:

  • Francesca Lyman, Inside the Dzanga-Sangha Rain Forest: Exploring the Heart of Central Africa, Workman Publishing Co.
  • Sharon Beder. Global Spin. The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism. 2 nd ed. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
  • J. Baird Callicott and Michael P. Nelson, The Great New Wilderness Debate, University of Georgia
  • David E. Camacho and Maria Bueno, Environmental Injustices, Political Struggles: Race, Class and the Environment, Duke University Press
  • Christopher H. Foreman Jr, The promise and peril of environmental justice Brookings Institution,
  • Jared M. Diamond,  Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies W. W. Norton & Company
  • Greta Gaard Ecological politics : Ecofeminists and the Greens, Temple University Press
  • Mark Hertzgard, Earth Odyssey: Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future, Broadway Books
  • Jane Holtz Kay, Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back, U. Calif. Press
  • Katy B. Payne, Silent Thunder: In the Presence of Elephants, Penguin Group
  • Ernst Weizsacker, Amory Lovins, Factor Four: Doubling Wealth - Halving Resource Use: The New Report to the Club of Rome, Earthscan/James & James  

1999

1999 -- Worldwatch reports that 7 out of 10 scientists believe we are experiencing the largest mass extinction of species in history.

1999, Sept. 30 -- Accidental nuclear reaction at Japan's Tokaimura uranium processing plant leads to evacuations.

1999 -- Earth's population exceeds six billion. Half are living in cities. Almost half (2.8 billion) live on less than $2 a day. UN agencies note that while globalization of trade has helped in some countries, the poor are becoming poorer both in absolute and relative terms.

ENVIRONMENTAL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 1999:

  • Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Building Blocks for Emerging Environmental Non-Profit Organizations: Lessons from the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Annapolis: BaySaver Institute
  • John Perlin, From Space to Earth: The story of Solar Electricity, AATEC Publications
  • Chellis Glendinning, Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Imperialism, the Global Economy and Other Earthly Whereabouts
  • Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
  • Hazel Henderson, Beyond Globalization: Shaping a Sustainable Global Economy
  • Todd Wilkinson, Science under Siege: The Politicians' War on Nature and Truth, Atlantic Books  
  • Alan Green, Animal Underworld: Inside America's Black Market for Rare and Exotic Species, PublicAffairs  
  • Sergio Diaz-Briquets, Conquering nature : the environmental legacy of socialism in Cuba, University of Pittsburgh Press
  • David Schlosberg, Environmental justice and the new pluralism: the challenge of difference for environmentalism Oxford University Press