9781422274057

A teenager in a canoe picks trash out of the Potomac River in Washington, DC, during the first Earth Day celebration in April 1970. Young people have been driving the environmental movement since the 1970s.

daily lives. In fact, by the year 1960 the levels of carbon di- oxide in the atmosphere had climbed to a stunning number of 300 parts per million worldwide. On January 28, 1969, the Santa Barbara oil well spilled more than 200,000 gal- lons of oil into the ocean for nearly two weeks. This caused massive amounts of pollution and damage to the coast- lines of California. On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio, seemed to catch on fire. While the river itself was not on fire, the chemicals and oil present on the surface of the water burned.

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Contemporary Issues: The Environment

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