ABSTRACT
The rst several years of the 1970s were a continuation of the marginal greening eorts experienced in the late 1960s. Following the social upheavals, including the civil-rights movement, peace marches, hippie movement, women’s movement, political assassinations, and continuation of the war with Vietnam, the 1970s opened in a tense but somewhat exhausted mood. With the fall of Saigon in 1973 the United States withdrew from Vietnam, and a year later president Nixon was forced to resign after the Watergate scandal. The Volkswagen’s “Beetle” became the most produced car of all time, a living symbol of Germany’s economic might. Ironically, the two countries that the Allied Powers had defeated in World War Two, Germany and Japan had become America’s main competitors. Catalytic converters were developed in the 1970s as a way to convert pollutants into safer emissions.
