2. Raising awareness of the environment: three key reports

2.1 Report of the Stockholm Conference

From the 1950s to the 1970s, the smallest but most powerful segment of humanity gradually became aware that not only could consumer goods alone not account for quality of life, but that they also contributed to the degradation of the environment. This observation was expressed in concrete terms by President Richard Nixon at Congress on January 22, 1970: "Over the next ten years, our wealth will increase by 50%. The key question is this: will we really be half as rich, half as prosperous, half as happy? Or will it mean that in 1980, the President standing in this place, looking back on the past ten years, will see a decade in which 70% of our population lived in urban centers paralyzed by traffic, suffocated by industrial smog, poisoned by water,...