MNN - Mother Nature Network

Jan. 7, 1948: In his annual State of the Union address, U.S. President Harry S. Truman gives a nod to conservation: "As a nation, we are coming to appreciate more each day the close relationship between the conservation of these resources and the preservation of our national strength."

 

Jan. 7, 1954: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower makes a pitch for national parks in his annual State of the Union address: "We shall continue to protect and improve our national forests, parks, monuments and other natural and historic sites, as well as our fishery and wildlife resources."

 

Jan. 7, 1993: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) designates secondhand tobacco smoke as a carcinogen, launching a new front in the battle against smoking.

 

Jan. 7, 2010: The journal Science publishes a piece from a team of ecologists, engineers and hydrologists, demanding an end to mountaintop removal mining (at right). Coal companies have shorn off the tops of hundreds of mountains in West Virginia, Virginia and Kentucky to remove the coal beneath. Waste from the mountaintops is dumped in adjacent valleys, burying rivers and small streams.