April 2009
Starting at the Beginning:
Earth Day Origins
Michael F. Forlenza, P.G.
HGS Editor
". . . on April 22, 1970, Earth Day was held, one of the most remarkable happenings in the history of democracy. . . "
-American Heritage Magazine, October 1993
Most people who have seen the evocative and haunting image of “Earthrise,” the photograph taken from Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve 1968, are struck by the rare beauty of the gem-blue orb of our planet suspended in the black void of space over the barren lunar surface. That image, during those turbulent times, conveyed the message of the precious uniqueness of our Earth.
Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 and most people know that it has something to do with the environment and cleanup activities. More importantly, Earth Day is an effective learning opportunity for young people and the wider public audience. Geoscientists should and do play an important role in Earth Day by providing unique perspectives and guidance based on our experience and study of earth systems and processes. But how did Earth Day get started?
Earth Day grew out of the activism and social upheaval of the 1960s. The 1960s were a time of civil rights demonstrations, Vietnam War protests, and generational clashes. Added to this volatile mix was a growing concern about ecological and environmental issues.
“The idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962,” said Gaylord Nelson, United States Senator from Wisconsin and the primary force behind the creation of Earth Day. “For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country,” he continued. “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 Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour.”
In the 1960s, Americans slurped 30-cent per gallon leaded gasoline through massive and inefficient V8 engines. Unchecked industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences, bad press, or protest. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Lifeless waterways were common throughout the nation. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.
By 1969, there was an awakening of public environmental concern. Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 bestseller, Silent Spring, shocked the nation with its description of the devastating effects of pesticide use on wildlife. The title referred to a future without birds and presented in plain language a discussion of the destructive effects of toxic chemicals on the ecosystem and ultimately on mankind. In 1964, Congress passed the sweeping Wilderness Act creating the legal, and poetic, definition of wilderness in the United States:
...an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.
The Wilderness Act protected more than nine million acres of federal land from development.
A weather inversion in 1965 created a four-day air pollution incident in New York City with 80 deaths. In March 1967, the tanker Torrey Canyon struck Pollard’s Rock spilling 29 million gallons of crude oil and fouling the coastlines of England and France. More than 200,000 gallons of crude from a blowout on a Union Oil platform washed up on Santa Barbara’s beaches in January 1969. And in June 1969, Ohio’s polluted Cuyahoga River burned.
The United States Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) in 1969 establishing a "national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment." At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, Senator Nelson, announced a plan for a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment in the spring of 1970. He proposed the event to thrust the environment onto the national agenda and modeled it on the highly-effective Vietnam War protests of the time. Senator Nelson chose April 22 to maximize participation on college campuses for what he conceived as an environmental teach-in. He determined that the week of April 19-25 was the best because the date did not fall during