It is not one of those days that evokes an “I remember where I was then” memory, but April 22, 1970, marked an important turning point in the American public conscience. On that Spring day 42 years ago, an almost unprecedented coalescence of otherwise disparate forces occurred.
It was the very first Earth Day.
The idea for Earth Day first occurred to Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. After watching the horror of the 1969 oil spill in Santa Barbara, Calif., Nelson knew he had to do something. Taking inspiration from the student anti-war movement, he reasoned he could infuse that same energy with the growing public awareness about air and water pollution, thus forcing environmental protection onto the national political agenda.
To accomplish this, Nelson had a three-pronged approach: He announced the idea for a “national teach-in on the environment” to the media; He persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair; and recruited Denis Hayes as national coordinator. Just a few years prior, another seminal figure in the environmental movement made her mark on the public consciousness.
With the publication of her 1962 bestseller, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson opened the county’s eyes to the ravages of unchecked industrial excesses. Through her writing, Carson elevated public awareness about environmental and public health issues.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
As a result of Carson’s influential tome and Nelson’s pivotal vision, Earth Day 1970 saw 20 million Americans take to the streets, rallying for improved public health and environmental regulation. As the Earth Day Network website describes, “Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.”
That momentous occasion represented an all-too-rare alignment of erstwhile political opponents. Again as EDN states, “ …enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.” As Gaylord later reflected, “It was a gamble, but it worked.”
Since those heady days of mass social activism, a lot has changed. DDT no longer threatens wildlife. Lead paint no longer poisons our children. Polluted rivers no longer catch fire. To be sure, this progress has not been without great opposition. At almost every threshold to better public policy, industry balks, decrying additional safeguards as the death knell to American commerce. Looking back across the decades, almost every piece of environmental legislation has been vociferously opposed by agents of the status quo. The inevitable pushback to stronger regulation invariably falls back on a few tired, specious arguments: New regulations will cripple industry; new regulation will cost jobs; new regulation has no basis in science.
Of course self-interested reactionary dogma is nothing new. It kept European sailors from finding the New World for millennia. Sail too far and you’ll fall off the edge. Everybody knows that. If “big government” intrusively makes us look for cleaner, more efficient, less fossil-fuel-dependent methods, we’ll become slaves to foreign overlords and our economy will die. At least that’s what many industrial, agricultural and economic powers would have you believe.
In the alternative, an embrace of strong environmental controls is less about draconian regulation than it is ascribing to a belief in something larger than ourselves. It is a communitarian perspective and ultimate statement of faith in American ingenuity. It tells the world that we are smart enough and sufficiently clever to not only be the most productive but to do so in a progressively safer, cleaner and ethical way.
While Earth Day may not loom large in the local conscience, the larger lessons of safe innovation and economic progress should. Those ideals are in accord, not conflict with all that is truly American.