Читать книгу Fundamentals of Conservation Biology - Malcolm L. Hunter Jr. - Страница 18

The first environmentalists were probably citizens of our earliest cities, more than 2000 years ago, who demanded sewers and chimneys to mitigate the impact of water and air pollution, respectively. For example, the Cloaca Maxima (which literally means “greatest sewer”) was built in Rome around 600 BCE. The industrial revolution accelerated urbanization and brought its own problems such as coal burning and factory discharges into water bodies. Environmental issues became much more high profile after publication of Rachel Carson’s 1962 treatise on pesticides, Silent Spring, and a global environmental movement finally coalesced at the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, in Stockholm in 1972. This event marked the beginning of an era of considerable effort toward environmental protection at the global, national, and local levels with many organizations created, laws passed, and treaties ratified.