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Amory Lovins born this day in 1947. A nuclear physicist, Lovins founded the Rocky Mountain Institute and is best known for promoting energy conservation and the “soft” energy path. He argues that nuclear power and fossil fuels are inefficient and expensive, taking away thousands of jobs that would otherwise have been created in cheaper energy efficiency projects. In a 2013 New York Times interview, Lovins said that solving environmental and energy problems “is not really going to require international agreements so much as it’ll be driven by the private sector and civil society in co-evolution, sped by military innovation – in other words spread by effective institutions and end-running the ineffective ones.”

National Coast Anti-Pollution League is formed on this  day in 1922  in Atlantic City, N.J.  at a conference of mayors and mainstream civic groups. The organization is a reaction to the growing problem of oil pollution. Gifford Pinchot,  founding director of  the US Forest Service, is elected president.  The NCAPL’s David Neuberger writes in the New York Times:

“About twenty miles below Sandy Hook (NJ) one is greeted by four miles of … oil, sludge, tar and bilge water resting on the ocean. It is steadily increasing and defiles everything it touches… The question presents itself: Shall industrial waste be held superior to the public weal, public health, sanitation and the conservation of food? Shall this sort of industiral progress be permitted at the expense of our people, and shall all these be made subservient to industrial waste? It was to overcome these conditions by drastic laws and their enforcement, compelling ship owners to find a method by which all these ills might be alleviated, and the owners of industrial plants shown the way to cooperate, that this League was organized. There are methods which, if properly applied, would stay the menace and avert the consequences.”

Grape strike

begins against grape growers in California on this day in 1965. The strike and boycott, organized by the United Farm Workers, headed by Cesar Chavez (right), lasts more than five years. It was an important victory for the UFW, leading to a first contract with grape growers and highlighting working conditions for migrant farm workers. According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, “conditions on farms in California today still resemble those that existed before 1962.” Chavez did not translate national support into a stronger farm worker’s organization, according to author Matt Garcia. “For those who seek to learn from the past, his story offers lessons about the very nature of leadership.”

Wangari Maathai wins the Nobel Peace Prize as leader of Africa’s Green Belt Movement, an environmental organization focused on conservation, tree planting and womens rights. The movement is in part a response to the fuel wood crisis that plagues rural residents in developing countries. Maathai has also been active in Kenyan politics, at one point in 1992 targeted for political assassination by the one-party government. Following reforms in the 1990s, Maathai became a minister of parliament and founded the Mazingira Green Party of Kenya.

Chipko movement revived on this day in 1974 when a group of women in Reni village, Uttarakhand, India, try to stop India’s Forest Department from cutting down a forest that was entailed in traditional forest rights of the village. Using the centuries-old method of protest, they would hug or stick to (‘chipko” in Hindi) the tree and, by extension, their principles. The 1974 Chipko protest was inspired by a similar protest in 1730, in Jodhpur, India, when 294 men and 69 women of the Bishnois branch of the Hindu faith died while hugging Khejri trees to protect them from foresters. This sacrifice is one origin of the semi-pejorative term for environmentalists: “tree hugger.” The 1974 Chipkos were successful in stopping the logging and the movement spread rapidly across the developing world. Today the Chipko movement is recalled as a major turning point for global eco-feminism.

Activists jailed — Two Mexican “campesino-environmentalists” are convicted on trumped up drug charges on this day in 2001. Rodolfo Montiel and Teodoro Cabrera were fighting illegal logging in Mexico, where, between 1994 and 2000, more than a third of the 560,000 acres of forest in the Costa Chica region of Guerrero state was cut down, according to a satellite imaging survey. Both were freed after international protests and exonerated by the InterAmerican Court of Human Rights. For more see the year 2000 Goldman Prize citation.

Annie Besant born this day in 1847. A British social reformer, Besant helped organize the “match girls strike” at the Bryant and May match factory in east London in 1888. The women complained of starvation wages and the terrible effects (such as “phossy jaw”) from phosphorus fumes in the factory. The strike eventually led to improvements in working conditions.

Edwin Chadwick born this day in 1800. Chadwick is the author of the 1842 Report on Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, and he is a tireless — and also tiresome — advocate for public health reform in the UK. Following the cholera epidemic of 1848, Parliament created the Board of Health. But by 1854 it was dismissed, partly because of Chadwick’s rigid and uncompromising personality, and partly because cholera was rapidly increasing in 1848, so the board’s work seemed to be having no effect. The Times of London approves of Chadwick’s firing in 1854 in this memorably barb: “We prefer to take our chance of cholera than be bullied into public health.”

Environmentalist killed in India Environmental activist Amit Jethwa was assassinated on this day in Gujarat, India in 2010. Jethwa had filed court cases against illegal mining in the protected area of the Gir Forest area near Junagadh, Gujarat and was involved in numerous other activities, according to
Conservation India.

Ironically, the killing is also on the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Brazilian environmentalist and tapero Wilson Pinheiro. Many others have been assassinated over the years: A comprehensive list is on this web site.

Aldo Leopold born this day in 1887. A forester, conservationist and author, Leopold is especially known for writing Sand County Almanac in 1947 and advocating a “land ethic” dealing with the relationship to the land, the animal and plants in an ecosystem. The book was a major contribution to the development of environmental ethics. He said: “The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land…[A] land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.”