The Environment Chronicle

In "Seveso is Everywhere", Egmont Koch and Fritz Vahrenholt warn of the dangers inherent in the chemicals industry.

The European Community publishes its first "Report on the State of the Environment"

Robert Jungk's book attacks the use of nuclear power, strengthening its opponents.

With its book on air quality criteria, dealing with lead, the FEA comes into serious conflict with the car lobby for the first time. However, the FEA's warnings have an effect: lead content in petrol is fixed by law and leaded normal petrol has been banned in Germany since 1988.

Herbert Gruhl (1921 - 1993), at the time a CDU member of parliament, publishes his (sometimes controversial) book.

The Advisory Scientific Council, a committee of experts reporting to the German government, produces its first report.

The Club of Rome's second report appears: "Mankind at the Turning-Point" by Mihailo Mesarovic and Eduard Pestel.

The much-discussed first report to the Club of Rome, "The Limits of Growth", by Dennis L. Meadows, is published.

"Silent Spring", a book by US biologist Rachel Louise Carson (1907 - 1964) is published. The German translation appears in 1970, and has a major impact on public opinion, to some extent initiating the environmental debate.

In his authoritative speech as President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the physicist William Crookes (1832 - 1919) warns of the scarcity of resources, particularly nitrogen fertiliser.

Robert Hasenclever (1841 - 1902), a soda producer in Stolberg, reports to the Aachen Scientific Society on desulphurisation of "smelting smoke", and publishes "On Harm to Vegetation Through Acid Gas" - a pioneering achievement in air quality.

The zoologist Ernst Haeckel coins the term ecology to describe "the body of knowledge concerning the economy of nature - the investigation of the total relation of the animal both to its inorganic and to its organic environment"

George Perkin Marsh (1801 - 1882) publishes his exhaustive "Man and Nature", reissued as "The Earth as modified by Human Action" in 1874. This is the first comprehensive description of the impact of human economic activity on land and sea around the world.

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) finally publishes his landmark opus " On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection...". The mechanics of nature and thereby the environment become more consciously understood.