![]() ![]() ![]() The Santa Barbara oil spill also had an immediate impact in national politics. The state of California strengthened its environmental regulatory agencies, including fines for corporate polluters, and enacted a moratorium on new offshore oil drilling platforms. This episode created a public outcry, placed oil corporations on the defensive, and inspired politicians at the local, state, and national levels to take action. And then during January-February 1969, the residue from the Santa Barbara oil spill covered more than 35 milies of Southern California coastline and had a catastrophic ecological impact. Investigations revealed that industrial drainage was washing up on Venice Beach, the Greater Los Angeles Zoo was flushing raw sewage directly into the Los Angeles River, and corporations were dumping solid waste into the Inner Harbor. Local politicians, residents, and environmental organizations had already been demanding action to address the smog crisis, chemical toxins such as DDT, and pollutants in the drinking supply. The episode received massive local and national media coverage, outraged public opinion, and contributed to a widespread sense that Southern California was "losing the fight against pollution of its irreplaceable water resources," in the words of the Los Angeles Times. In January 1969, a Union Oil drilling platform exploded off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, dumping around 100,000 barrels worth of crude oil into the ocean, killing wildlife and washing up on the beaches enjoyed by coastal residents. Interior Secretary Admits Lax Drilling Enforcement As a result, air quality emerged as an issue of great concern for the growing environmental movement. ![]() This event was more widely-publicized, thanks to a growing awareness of the health effects of air pollution, and caused people across the country to connect these severe events to the pollution in their communities. Thirteen years later, a similar smog event occurred over Thanksgiving weekend, again linked to the deaths of about 200 people. Two of its most severe smog events occurred in the Novembers of 19 when, as an article in the EPA Journal reported, “Indian summer heat inversions trapped the chemicals and particulates from industrial smokestacks, chimneys, and vehicles that crammed the city streets, keeping the pollutants from rising.” The 1953 event closed at least two airports, caused respiratory distress among many New York residents, and was later linked to the deaths of between 170 and 200 people, though at the time its severity was not known. New York City, the country’s economic center, suffered from smog under certain weather conditions. Driven by fear and empowered with information, the American public was poised to demand change. Paul Ehrlich’s book The Population Bomb (1968) connected the dots and helped the public realize that the issues were all related: an exponentially growing population meant an increasing demand for limited resources, which led to unwise decisions about resource use. Pervasive smog in New York City and Los Angeles, the Santa Barbara oil spill, and the Cuyahoga River fires made headlines and frightened Americans across the country. Soon before the crisis took its final form, several immensely popular books including Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring and Ralph Nader’s 1965 Unsafe at Any Speed pushed the public to question the relationship between the government, tasked with protecting the public interest, and industries, incentivized to act in their own economic interests. During the late 1960s, an “environmental crisis” took shape as a series of environmental catastrophes and revelatory books transformed the American environmental consciousness.
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