Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise

1. Earth Day: When the People Spoke

1 Earth Day When the People Spoke If we have the will, the environmental challenge can be met. —1970 Earth Day took root on April 22, 1970, and has since spread across the country as an annual event in thousands of schools, churches, and local communities as well as in many countries around the world. What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked. Having spoken on environmental issues in some two dozen states during the twelve years before that first Earth Day, I knew the public was far ahead of the political establishment in its concern for what was happening to the environment. The signs of degradation were everywhere—polluted rivers, lakes, ocean beaches, and air. The goal of Earth Day was to inspire a public demonstration so big it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and force the environmental issue onto the national political agenda. That is what happened. The idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. It had been troubling me for several years that the state 3 of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political limelight once and for all. The idea was to persuade President John F. Kennedy to give visibility to the issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the president. By coincidence, the Senate scheduled a vote on ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty for the same date—September 24, 1963— that the president chose to begin his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour. The president delayed his departure until I and Senators Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, and Joe Clark had voted on the ratification so that we could join him for the first leg of the conservation tour. When we took off on Air Force One, the plane was loaded with press and TV reporters. But the hot news was ratification of the Test Ban Treaty, which President Kennedy strongly supported . At every stop during the next five days the test ban was what 4 THE EARTH AND ITS DAY Scenes of riverfront waste disposal were the rule before the first Earth Day. Photograph courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. the news media wanted to hear about—they didn’t know much of anything about environmental issues, and their editors knew even less. Although the tour did not succeed in putting the issue on the national political agenda, it would be the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day. During the next few years, I spoke to audiences all across the country. The evidence of environmental deterioration was all around us, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation’s political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not. After President Kennedy’s tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti–Vietnam War demonstrations, called “teach-ins,” had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Why not organize a huge, grassroots protest about what was happening to our environment? Earth Day: When the People Spoke 5 The Clean Water Act and amendments in later years curbed pollution like that found on this Oregon beach in 1972. Coos Bay District Attorney Bob Brasch examined sludge from a pulp mill settling pond that spilled foul-smelling liquid into the ocean. Photograph courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It was a time when people could see, smell, and taste pollution. The air above major cities such as New York and Los Angeles was orange, Lake Erie was proclaimed dead, and backyard birds were dying from a chemical known as DDT. Public interest was further piqued by two environmental catastrophes that captured headlines from coast to coast earlier that year. The first was...