Zine Timeline

Rev. Thomas Malthus publishes his essay on the booming populations and the relation of farming and production to sustainability. He creates some intense imagery of famine, war, and plagues, but notes that more everyday measures can be taken to control population, such as delaying marriage or abstaining from procreation due to little available resources.

Sources: Malthus, Thomas. An Essay on the Principle of Population. Electronic Scholarly Publishing Project, 1798, http://www.esp.org/books/malthus/population/malthus.pdf

Image Credit: Uploaded by Kravietz on Wikimedia, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en), no changes made.
Original link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malthus_PL_en.svg

Due to the booming Industrial Revolution in Britain, pollution and human health became a major concern as production increased. Gas companies in Britain, which were dumping loads of waste material into lakes and sewers, became a primary concern for human health. After years of outcry from citizens, Parliament started to pass acts in 1816 and 1817 that allowed citizens to make nuisance claims against British companies, but it wasn't until 1818 that Parliament began to issue pointed clauses that related to the issue of gas pollution.

Tomory, Leslie. "The Environmental History of the Early British Gas Industry, 1812–1830". Environmental History, no 17, pages 29–54. 10.1093/envhis/emr093.

Image Credit: licensed under U.S. Public Domain (PD-US).
Original Link: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Barrow_Steelworks.jpg

Herbert Spencer, after reading Darwin's Origin of the Species, coined the term "survival of the fittest" in his Principles of Biology. Herbert Spencer draws parallels between his own economic theories and Darwin's biological ones, declaring that "survival of the fittest...is....the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life" (444). Herbert Spencer's term would spurn on capitalism, colonialism, laissez-faire economics, racism, and war.

Sources: Spencer, Herbert. "Principles of Biology." New York and London D. Appleton and Co., 1898, vol 1, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Biology_Vol._I.
Public domain, text licensed by Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0, provided by Project Gutenberg with contributions from Wiki User Laverock (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Laverock).
Image Credit: United States Public Domain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:PD-US)

A mathematician and economic theorist, Harold Hotelling publishes his article "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources" in The Journal of Political Economy. His article tries to find a happy medium between consumers, businesses, and environmental concerns, writing that " The conservation movement, in so far as it aims at absolute prohibitions rather than taxation or regulation in the interest of efficiency, may be accused of playing into the hands of those who are interested in maintaining high prices for the sake of their own pockets rather than of posterity" (Hotelling 138). Hotelling's article is the first example of combining consumers and businesses' interests with environmentalism.

Source: Hotelling, Harold. “The Economics of Exhaustible Resources.” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 39, no. 2, 1931, pp. 137–175. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1822328.

Image Credit: Licensed under U.S. Public Domain (PD-US)
Original link: https://archive.org/details/17204222/page/16/mode/2up

Chemical fertilizer and agro-chemicals are adopted into agriculture and farming techniques to produce high levels of crops yielded. Coupled with new techniques for irrigation and mechanized cultivation, crops that were necessary staples for developing countries, such as rice, sorghum, wheat, millet, maize, casava, and beans, began to boom at incredible rates. The "revolution" was heavily backed by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, and the term was coined by USAID Administrator W.S. Gaud, who hoped to contain the "Red Revolution" of Communism that was banking on poverty in developing countries. However, The Green Revolution has devastating consequences on rural wildlife, as the herbicides, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers did more harm than good.

Hazell, Peter B.R. "The Asian Green Revolution." International Food Policy Research Institute, 2009, https://books.google.com/books?id=frNfVx-KZOcC&lpg=PA1&pg=PP2#v=onepage&q&f=false.

Image Credit: U.S. Public Domain (PD-USGOV-USDA) license (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cropduster_spraying_pesticides.jpg).

Forbes released its top 400 wealthiest Americans, and despite the stumbling economy at the time, Micheal Moore declares to a crowd of thousands in 2011 that "400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined" ("'America Is NOT Broke'"). Micheal Moore was speaking at a protest against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker at the time, but his speech gained traction among American citizens in protest of the wealthy 1%

Source: Kertscher, Tom. "Michael Moore says 400 Americans have more wealth than half of all Americans combined." PolitiFact, Poytner Institute 10 March 2011, https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/mar/10/michael-moore/michael-moore-says-400-americans-have-more-wealth-/.

Moore, Riley. "'America Is NOT Broke': Michael Moore Speaks in Madison, WI -- March 5, 2011." YouTube, uploaded by mmflint, 5 March 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgNuSEZ8CDw&feature=player_embedded.
Image Credit: Uploaded by Stephen Ewen (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/User:Stephen_Ewen), licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en), no changes made.

In April of 2015, the city of Flint, Michigan, begins to pump water from the local Flint River because it is a cheaper source of water. Despite press releases that the water was safe to drink, there were traces of E. coli and total coliform bacteria detected. In 2015, Flint was found to be in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act due to disinfectant byproducts found in the drinking water. A month later, lead was found in the water of a Flint resident's home, which led to further testing and eventual outcry.
Source: Kennedy, Merrit. "Lead-Laced Water In Flint: A Step-By-Step Look At The Makings Of A Crisis." NPR, 20 April 2016, https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/04/20/465545378/lead-laced-water-in-flint-a-step-by-step-look-at-the-makings-of-a-crisis.
Image Credits: Flint Skyline, released to Public Domain (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flint_skyline2.jpg).

In August of 2017, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that "women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings that were 82 percent of those of male full-time wage and salary workers" (Highlights of Women's Earnings 2016). Despite numerous signed acts that aim to decrease the gender wage gap, Utah reported the lowest percentage of women's earnings to men's- 69.9%.
Source: "Highlights of Women's Earnings in 2016." U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, August 2017, Report 1069, https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2016/pdf/home.pdf.
Image Credit: Licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Publication https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en.