At the end of World War II, the United States had few laws protecting the environment. Just 30 years later, the Environmental Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act had been enacted, representing the urgency of, and widespread support for, environmental protections in those years. Douglas Brinkley, author of Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and the Great Environmental Awakening (Harper Collins, 2022) joins Bob & Ben to discuss the story of environmentalism in the US from Kennedy to Nixon, and how ecologists and great thinkers such as Rachel Carson were able to channel public concern over the environment into policies that continue to benefit us today.
Dr. Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. You can hear our previous conversations with Doug in RTN episode 52 and episode 87.
You can hear our full unedited conversation w/ Douglas Brinkley by joining us on Patreon! Just click here or go to Patreon.com/TheRoadToNow to join!
This episode was edited by Gary Fletcher and Ben Sawyer.