How Earth Day Turned America Green

The nation’s news media were uncertain what to make of Earth Day. Newsweek was bemused, and somewhat dismissive, calling Earth Day “a bizarre nationwide rain dance” and the nation’s “biggest street festival since the Japanese surrendered in 1945.” Time said the day “had aspects of a secular, almost pagan holiday…” The question, Newsweek asked, was “whether the whole uprising represented a giant step forward for contaminated Earthmen or just a springtime skipalong.” The event lacked the passion of antiwar and civil rights movements, Newsweek said, and the issues were so unfocused as to give rise to “the kind of nearly unanimous blather usually reserved for the flag.”

Time said the real question was whether the movement was a fad or could sustain the interest and commitment it would take to bring about real change. “Was it all a passing fancy…?” The New York Times asked in a morning-after editorial, then answered its own question: “We think not.  Conservation is a cause … whose time has come because life is running out. Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day’s founder, framed the question differently.  In a four-day speaking tour that took him from New England to the Midwest to the West Coast, Nelson said: “This is not just an issue of survival.  Mere survival is not enough.  How we survive is the critical issue. . . . Our goal is not just an environment of clean air, and water, and scenic beauty – while forgetting about the Appalachias and the ghettos where our citizens live in America’s worst environment. . . . Our goal is an environment of decency, quality, and mutual respect for all other human creatures and all other living creatures – an environment without ugliness, without ghettoes, without discrimination, without hunger, poverty, or war. Our goal is a decent environment in the deepest and broadest sense.”

A tall order, bordering on Utopian. But on this first Earth Day, anything seemed possible. Nelson, after years of talking quietly, persuasively, and persistently about the environment, had unleashed a whirlwind.  Time wondered whether Nelson was “a bit too euphoric”, when he said, in his Earth Day speech in Denver: “Earth Day may be a turning point in American history.  It may be the birth date of a new American ethic that rejects the frontier philosophy that the continent was put here for our plunder, and accepts the idea that even urbanized, affluent, mobile societies are interdependent with the fragile, life-sustaining systems of the air, the water, the land.”

But his assessment was reasonably accurate. Others who looked at Earth Day in retrospect agreed that it was a watershed event. Philip Shabecoff, a longtime New York Times environmental reporter, called it  “the day environmentalism in the United States began to emerge as a mass social movement.” American Heritage magazine described Earth Day as “one of the most remarkable happenings in the history of democracy…American politics and public policy would never be the same again.” Denis Hayes, the national coordinator for Earth Day, later called it the largest organized demonstration in the history of the world [2].

Nelson, the visionary behind Earth Day, had spent a decade searching for a catalyst to make the environment a prominent part of the nation’s political agenda. As the leading environmentalist in the U.S. Senate, Nelson had given hundreds of speeches on the issue and visited twenty-five states during the 1960s. It was clear to him that there was widespread concern about environmental pollution. Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb,” and other important and critical writing about the environment had helped raise awareness. But issues closer to home were what energized people. Even environmental politics are local. Almost everyone had a cause, a personal connection, some special project or concern, a reason to care about the environment. It wasn’t all about Lake Erie dying or the Cuyahoga River catching fire or the Santa Barbara oil spill or other highly publicized examples of the growing threat to the environment. It was about the local landfill leaching into wells, or the city spraying DDT, or fish dying in the river, or a myriad of other local environmental problems that became apparent during the 1960s. Nelson heard it everywhere he went. What was needed, he decided, was something dramatic, “a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and finally force this issue permanently into the political arena.”

That was the genius of Earth Day – tapping the wellspring of environmental concern that was bubbling just below the surface of the national consciousness. When it happened, “It was truly an astonishing grassroots explosion,” Nelson said. “The people cared and Earth Day became the first opportunity they ever had to … send a big message to the politicians – a message to tell them to wake up and do something. It worked because of the spontaneous, enthusiastic reception at the grassroots. Nothing like it had ever happened before. While our organizing on college campuses was very well done, the thousands of events in our schools and communities were self-generated at the local level.” [3]

Gaylord Nelson and Bill Christofferson at a book signing in 2004.

Earth Day introduced the Environmental Decade, an unparalleled period of legislative and grassroots activity to protect the nation’s environment. More significant environmental legislation was signed into law during the eleven-year “decade” (1970-1980) than during the 170-year period prior to Earth Day. Congress passed twenty-eight major environmental laws, and hundreds of other public lands bills to protect and conserve natural resources.

As Shabecoff put it, “After Earth Day, nothing was the same.”

This story excerpted from Bill Christofferson’s book, “The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator Gaylord Nelson” published in 2004. Copies are still available at Amazon.com

Footnotes

[1]Richard Harwood, “Earth Day Stirs Nation,” WP, 23 April 1970. “Area Holds Cleanup With Rally,” WP, 23 April 1970.

[2]Philip Shabecoff, A Fierce Green Fire (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993), 113. American Heritage, October 1993

[3]Ibid.

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