The environmental movement grew in steps, each one pushed by something people could not ignore.
A problem
- Pesticides kill birds
Awareness
- A book makes millions notice
Action
- A ban, a law, a new movement
Seven kinds of influence
- Individuals: an activist
- Literature: an author
- Media: a film or documentary
- Disasters
- International agreements
- New technologies
- Scientific discoveries
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Two people who changed how millions saw the environment.
Rachel Carson
1907–1964, author
Her book Silent Spring (1962) showed how the pesticide DDT built up in food chains and killed birds.
What followed
- Public alarm about pesticides.
- The US banned DDT on farms (1972).
- It helped start the modern movement.
Greta Thunberg
born 2003, activist
Began a school strike for the climate in 2018, alone outside Sweden's parliament.
What followed
- Fridays for Future spread worldwide.
- Millions of young people joined climate strikes in 2019.
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Media: An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
- Al Gore's documentary on climate change.
- Won an Oscar and reached a huge audience.
- Made climate change a household topic.
Disaster: Minamata, Japan (1956)
- A factory released mercury into the bay.
- People who ate the fish were poisoned.
- Led, decades later, to a global treaty on mercury (2013).
Why these work: A film brings a distant problem into people's homes. A disaster makes the harm impossible to deny.
Agreement
- Paris Agreement (COP21, 2015).
- Countries agreed to keep warming well below 2 °C.
Technology
- Plant-based meats.
- Make eating less meat easy, cutting farm emissions.
Science
- The ozone hole (discovered 1985).
- Proved chemicals were thinning the ozone layer.
Chains of influence: Influences link: the ozone discovery led quickly to an agreement to phase out the chemicals causing it.
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How this comes up: Paper 2 part (a) [4]: identify four areas of influence, each with a named example.
With reference to named examples, identify four areas of influence that have shaped the environmental movement.
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