Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise

Appendix 2: Introduction to “Environmental Agenda for Earth Day 1970”

169 Appendix 2 Introduction to “Environmental Agenda for Earth Day 1970” As presented to the 91st Congress, January 19, 1970 In the nearly forty years since Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address that “this great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper,” our economy has soared to levels that no one in the 1930s could have imagined. In these past four decades we have become the wealthiest nation on earth by almost any measure of production and consumption. As the economic boom and the postwar population explosion continued to break all records, a national legend developed: with science and technology as its tools the private enterprise system could accomplish anything. We assumed that, if private enterprise could turn out more automobiles , airplanes and TV sets than all the rest of the world combined , somehow it could create a transportation system that would work. If we were the greatest builders in the world, we need not worry about our poor and about the planning and building of our cities. Private enterprise with enough technology and enough profit would manage that just fine. In short, we assumed that if private enterprise could be such a spectacular success in the production of goods and services, it could do our social planning for us too, set our national priorities, shape our social system, and even establish our individual aspirations. In fact, I am sure most can recall the famous words of Charles Wilson back in the 1950s, when he said, “What’s good for the country is good for General Motors, and vice versa.” In the 1960s the era of fantastic achievement marched on to levels unprecedented in the history of man. It was the decade when man walked on the moon; when medical magic transplanted the human heart; when the computer’s mechanical wizardry became a part of daily life; and when, instead of “a chicken in every pot,” the national aim seemed to be two cars in every garage, a summer home, a color television set, and a vacation home in Europe. From the small farmers and small merchants of the last century, we had become the “consumer society,” with science and technology as the New Testament and the gross national product as the Holy Grail. One might have thought we would have emerged triumphantly from the 1960s with a shout: “Bring on the next decade.” We have not. For, in addition to the other dramatic national and international events, the 1960s have produced another kind of “top of the decade” list. It has been a decade when the darkening cloud of pollution seriously began degrading the thin envelope of air surrounding the globe; when pesticides and unrestricted waste disposal threatened the productivity of all the oceans of the world; when virtually every lake, river and watershed in America began to show the distressing symptoms of being overloaded with polluting materials. These pivotal events have begun to warn the nation of a disturbing new paradox: the mindless pursuit of quantity is destroying—not enhancing—the opportunity to achieve quality in our lives. In the words of the American balladeer, Pete Seeger, we have found ourselves “standing knee-deep in garbage, throwing rockets at the moon.” Cumulatively, “progress—American style” adds up each year to two hundred million tons of smoke and fumes, seven million junked cars, twenty million tons of paper, forty-eight billion cans, and twentyeight billion bottles. It also means bulldozers gnawing away at the 170 APPENDIX 2 landscape to make room for more unplanned expansion, more leisure time but less open space in which to spend it, and so much reckless progress that we face even now a hostile environment. As one measure of the rate of consumption that demands our resources and creates our vast wastes, it has been estimated that all the American children born in just one year would use up two hundred million pounds of steel, 9.1 billion gallons of gasoline, and twenty-five billion pounds of beef during their lifetimes. To provide electricity for our air conditioners, the Kentucky hillside is strip-mined. To provide the gasoline for our automobiles, the ocean floor is drilled for oil. To provide the sites for our second homes, the shore of a pristine lake is subdivided. The unforeseen— or ignored—consequences of an urbanizing, affluent, mobile, more populous society have poisoned, scarred and polluted what once...