The Spirit of the First Earth Day, by Jack Lewis
[EPA Journal - January/February 1990] In the waning months of the 1960s, environmental
problems were proliferating like a many-headed hydra, a monster no one could
understand let alone tame or slay. Rampant air pollution was linked to disease
and death in New York, Los Angeles, and elsewhere as noxious fumes, spewed out
by cars and factories, made city life less and less bearable. In the wake of
Rachel Carson's 1962 best-seller, Silent Spring, there was widespread
concern over large-scale use of pesticides, often near densely populated
communities. In addition, huge fish kills were reported on the Great Lakes, and
the media carried the news that Lake Erie, one of America's largest bodies of
fresh water, was in its death throes. Ohio had another jolt when Cleveland's
Cuyahoga River, an artery inundated with oil and toxic chemicals, burst into
flames by spontaneous combustion.
In a response commensurate with the problem, an
estimated 20 million Americans gathered together on April 22, 1970, to
participate in a spectacularly well-publicized environmental demonstration known
as "Earth Day." The rallies, teach-ins, speeches, and publicity gambits almost
all went smoothly, amid a heady and triumphant atmosphere that was further
enhanced by perfect spring weather. But the months leading up to Earth Day had
been frantic, and the success of the event had been unpredictable up to the very
last moment.
Such uncertainty is endemic when volunteer effort is
the driving force behind any activity, let alone one as ambitious as Earth Day
1970. Some of the grassroots activists who coordinated the work of thousands of
Earth Day volunteers had come to the environmental cause rather late, after
cutting their teeth on other political issues of the 1960s, such as civil rights
and the anti-war movement. Others, however, had been intensely involved in
environmental causes for many years. Whatever their background, these activists
were the driving force not only behind Earth Day, but also behind many smaller
and less publicized environmental reforms during the closing months of the
1960s.
The term "Breathers' Lobby" was coined by the Wall
Street Journal in the late 1960s to denote one of the most prominent
components of the grassroots movement: the congeries of anti-air pollution
groups that had sprung up over the previous decade in urban areas across the
country. GASP in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh, the Metropolitan Washington
Coalition on Clean Air, the Delaware Clean Air Coalition, and other similar
groups started with sweat equity, then qualified for grants and technical
assistance from the federal government. Groups focusing on water quality issues
were also making dramatic inroads: most notably, the Lake Michigan Federation,
and Get Oil Out in Santa Barbara, California.
The anti-pollution stance of these groups, after
changing the climate of political opinion at the state and local level, quickly
permeated editorials and editorial cartoons featured in the nation's leading
newspapers. Even Broadway picked up the environmental theme when the smash-hit
musical Hair lampooned air pollution with a hilarious song called "The
Air," which ended in a choking chorus of coughs. Readers were sampling a range
of provocative books on the environment: The Whole Earth Catalogue,
John Sax's The Environmental Bill of Rights, Paul Ehrlich's The
Population Bomb, and Charles Reich's The Greening of America.
Students tuned into the counterculture were picking up environmental messages
from rock lyrics.
Media coverage of the massive youth rallies of 1969 -
as well as the ghetto riots of 1965 to 1968 - helped to impress on the American
public that the United States had become an urban country with complex problems
compounded by huge numbers of people. Early in the 1960s, most rhetoric about
the state of America's air, water, and other resources had revolved around the
word "conservation," with heavy emphasis on the preservation of parks and
recreational areas. The word "environment" came into widespread use only at the
end of the decade. By then, committed activists understood that urban
environments would be the battlefield for years to come, but they wanted the
American public and American political leaders to understand that as well.
One prominent politician, Gaylord Nelson, then Senator
from Wisconsin, had been frustrated throughout the 1960s by the fact that only a "handful" of his Congressional colleagues had any interest in environmental
issues. On the other hand, during his travels across the United States, he had
been greatly impressed by the dedication and the expertise of the many student
and citizen volunteers who were trying to solve pollution problems in their
communities.
It was on one such trip, in August 1969, that Nelson
came up with a strategy for bridging the gap separating grassroots activists
from Congress and the general public. While en route to an environmental speech
in Berkeley, California, the Senator was leafing through a copy of Ramparts
magazine, when an article about anti-war teach-ins caught his eye. It occurred
to him that the teach-in concept might work equally well in raising public
awareness of environmental issues.
In September, in a ground-breaking speech in Seattle,
Senator Nelson announced the concept of the teach-in and received coverage in
Time and Newsweek and on the front page of the New York
Times. Several weeks later, at his office on Capitol Hill, he incorporated
a non-profit, non-partisan organization called Environmental Teach-In, Inc. He
announced that it was to be headed by a steering committee consisting of
himself, Pete McCloskey, a Congressman from California, and Sidney Howe, then
the President of The Conservation Foundation.
The main purpose of the new organization, he declared,
was to lay the groundwork for a major nationwide series of teach-ins on the
environment early in 1970. The purpose of the teach-ins was, in Nelson's words,
to "force the issue [of the environment] into the political dialogue of the
country." Very quickly, Environmental Teach-In received pledges from the Senator
himself ($15,000), from the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO ($2,000 each),
as well as from The Conservation Foundation ($25,000) and other organizations.
Early in December, Senator Nelson selected a 25-year
old named Denis Hayes, the dynamic former President of the Stanford student
body, as national coordinator. Hayes, postponing plans to enter Harvard Law
School, immediately set to work making plans for the inaugural Earth Day.
Hampered from the start by an extremely limited budget
(approximately $190,000), he rented an office in Washington and gathered around
him an enthusiastic cadre of volunteers, most of them students. The most
promising and the most dedicated of these were named coordinators for various
regions of the country. Working in an atmosphere Midwest Coordinator Barbara
Reid Alexander recalls as "mass confusion," they were inundated each day by
torrents of phone calls and overflowing mailbags.
Senator Nelson's Senate staff lent its full support and
guidance to the work of Hayes and his assistants, only a few of whom were
salaried and those only at meager levels. Nelson and Hayes had already agreed
that the teach-ins should, wherever possible, be located not on college
campuses, but in public spaces within the community, and furthermore, that
active participation should be sought from labor unions, the League of Women
Voters, and other organizations. The latter goal was realized, but not the
former, at least not to the extent originally intended.
One masterstroke was the purchase of a full-page ad
that appeared in the New York Times early in February 1970. The
advertisement announced that on April 22, 1970, at locations throughout the
United States, citizens would demonstrate for a cleaner environment. Immediately
contribution started to roll in, and better yet, the curiosity of network
broadcasting giants was piqued.
April 22, 1970, a Wednesday, was a glorious spring day
in most parts of the country. Newspapers such as the New York Times and
the Washington Post had given front-page coverage the day before to the
roster of scheduled events, and the television networks also had provided enough
coverage to give the impending day something of the aura of a national holiday.
Perhaps the most impressive observance was in New York
City, whose mayor, John V. Lindsay, had thrown the full weight of his influence
behind Earth Day. For two hours, Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic between 14th
Street and 59th Street, bringing midtown Manhattan to a virtual standstill. One
innovative group of demonstrators grabbed attention by dragging a net filled
with dead fish down the thoroughfare, shouting to passersby, "This could be
you!" Later in the day, a rally filled Union Square to overflowing as Mayor
Lindsay, assisted by celebrities Paul Newman and Ali McGraw, spoke from a raised
platform looking out over a sea of smiling faces. In New York, as elsewhere,
self-policing demonstrators left surprising little litter in their wake.
In Washington, the focus of events was the Washington
Monument and its adjacent Sylvan Theatre, where thousands of Earth Day
demonstrators congregated to hear speeches as well as songs by Pete Seeger and
other performers. One of the most noteworthy statements, by Denis Hayes, made it
clear that Earth Day was a beginning, not an end in itself: "If the environment
is a fad, it's going to be our last fad...We are building a movement, a movement
with a broad base, a movement which transcends traditional political boundaries.
It is a movement that values people more than technology, people more than
political boundaries, people more than profit."
There was no point in marching to Capitol Hill, for
Congress at the behest of Gaylord Nelson and others had recessed so that members
could return to their constituencies and address Earth Day rallies.
Interestingly, many of these politicians had to borrow prepared texts from
Nelson and Environmental Teach-In, Inc. Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and
most other major American cities were also scenes of Earth Day rallies; in fact,
80 percent of all observances were urban affairs.
To countless participants, Earth Day was a turning
point in their lives, which they remember to this day with awe and reverence. "It was something magical and catalytical," remarked Denis Hayes, "touching a
huge cross-section of Americans." Byron Kennard, then a grassroots coordinator
with The Conservation Foundation, was also impressed by "one of the largest
peaceful demonstrations in human history, [an event] sacred in my memory." "A
charmed event," "a joyous occasion," "a public-relations masterpiece,"
"foundation of a national environmental consciousness" were words of praise
conjured by other participants.
Earth Day was also the foundation of many environmental
careers. Denis Hayes and Ed Furia, who are heading the 20th anniversary
celebration of Earth Day, are typical of many individuals who built
environmental careers on the momentum generated that day. One former
participant, Tom Jorling, is today Commissioner of New York's Department of
Environmental Conservation; another, John Turner, is Director of the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service. The list goes on.
Public opinion polls indicate that a permanent change
in national priorities followed Earth Day 1970. When polled in May 1971, 25
percent of the U.S. public declared protecting the environment to be an
important goal a 2500 percent increase over 1969. That percentage has continued
to grow, albeit more slowly, so it is fair to say that the ideals espoused on
April 22, 1970, however naive and simplistic they were in many ways, have left
an enduring legacy. They are, in the words of Barry Commoner, "permanently
imbedded in our culture." Sam Love, who was Southern Coordinator for
Environmental Teach-In, fully agrees: "What has surprised me, is the staying
power of the environmental movement. A lot of people were saying this was a
flash in the pan. History has proven them wrong."
With the founding of EPA in December 1970, the history
of the environmental movement entered a new phase. The Agency was fused together
from 44 organizations scattered in nine departments, and it gave a much stronger
profile to the federal effort to curb environmental decay across the nation.
Also during the 1970s, in keeping with the stepped-up pace of environmental
reform, conservation organizations began to take more active stances on urban
environmental issues. These private lobbying groups soon found that they needed
lawyers, scientists, and economists to make their voices heard. The whole tenor
of environmental activism increasingly took on an aura of "professionalism" that
was a far cry from the bold sometimes simplistic generalities debated on Earth
Day 1970.
Yet today - despite the rise of specialists and experts
- grassroots emotions still boil over in the face of clearcut local issues, such
as defective landfills or hazardous medical waste, which can quickly galvanize a
community of homeowners.
The signs are promising that Earth Day 1990 will suffer
from no dearth of volunteers or money. Its budget of $3 million is 15 times
greater than the budget of the 1970 event, and its scope will be worldwide,
rather than strictly confined to the United States and Canada. In fact, there is
every reason to expect that Earth Day 1990 will be an appropriate legacy of that
April day 20 years ago when, even if only for 24 hours, people really did seem
to matter more than profit and more than technology.
Lewis was an Assistant Editor of EPA
Journal
