Les Phillips
(CC-BY-NC-ND)
Today is the 52nd Earth Day. It is the largest annual secular event in the world with over one billion participants since its start. The first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, marks the beginning of the modern, global environmental movement. It’s been a long journey.
In 1962 Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring. It was and remains a must read for two reasons. First, it brought the environmental issue of the use of pesticides and the devastation they caused to the public’s attention, like no one else had. The United States has tradition of authors who write about Humanity’s relationship with Nature and Wilderness. These writers, such as Henry David Thoreau (1854), John Muir (1911) and Aldo Leopold (1949), slowly moved the public’s environmental awareness forward. But it was Silent Spring that fired the public’s imagination by vividly describing the links between pollution, its impact on wildlife and public health. The book sold 500,000 copies world-wide.
The second reason is that Carson and her book were attacked mercilessly in a way that became the blueprint for future assaults by corporations against their enemies, such as auto safety, tobacco’s addictive and poisonous nature, climate change with its existential threat to humanity, and anything else that threatens the status quo and profits. The strategy is familiar and effective.
It began by claiming the book was full of inaccuracies, then effort to discredit the Carson in an attempt to destroy her career and confuse the public by claiming that the observations and evidence were not conclusive. The chemical companies who made the pesticides argued that there was a legitimate disagreement in the scientific community as to whether or not these chemicals were dangerous. Even though the science had been verified time and again. It was a campaign of lies and misdirection. Today we see the same arguments used to delay effective action on climate change and, in politics, the claims of voter fraud and a stolen election.
In spite of this relentless wind of deception, Silent Spring’s spark ignited a fire. Public awareness grew, particularly among members of the counterculture and college students. The astronauts’ powerful photos of Earth as seen from the moon reinforced the growing realization that Earth was not limitless and needed to be protected. The tipping point was an oil spill offshore of Santa Barbara, California. At the time it was the largest spill in US history. Today it ranks third behind the Exxon Valdez in Prince William Sound, Alaska (1989) and the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico (2010).
On January 28, 1969, a blowout on a drilling platform began hemorrhaging crude oil. Within 24 hours an oil slick covering 50 square miles had formed. It gushed until February 7 and then continued to leak until April, releasing 100,000 barrels, about 500,000 gallons of oil. The results were devastating. In some areas, beaches were covered in six inches of the gelatinous poison. The fouling of the coast with the gruesome deaths of up to 9,000 sea birds. The disturbing photos of the dying birds was a grim counterpoint to the astronauts’ blue marble images of Earth. The American public was sickened. This with other recent pollution events and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring triggered what was to happen next.
Two visitors to the spill, President Richard Nixon and Senator Gaylord Nelson, would be instrumental in creating the environmental movement we are familiar with today. Nixon, an owner of California beach front property, stated that, “The Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.” Nixon would then go on to establish the Environmental Protection Agency in December 1970. In December of 1970, Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, and the EPA began enforcement a few months later in 1971. The American public demanded action and they got it.
Note: The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), January 01, 1970, is often overlooked for its importance. NEPA holds federal agencies accountable for the environmental impact their actions may have. Actions such as, how permit applications are decided, the adoption of land management decisions, and the environmental impact of the construction of government facilities, including highways. NEPA provides the authority and procedures necessary to ensure that government entities are true to the law and spirit of environmental legislation. Recently, President Biden announced that he would roll back certain Trump orders that were used to hobble the NEPA, permitting looser interpretations that favored business over the environment and public health.
Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin who was active in the environmental movement, also visited the disaster. After witnessing the carnage, Nelson left Santa Barbara to go speak at a Vietnam anti-war teach-in. He was pondering how to further engage the public in the fight against pollution’s environmental impact. At the time, American support was growing but was disorganized. What was needed was a way to pull everyone together. Senator Nelson realized that teach-ins were the answer. The teach-ins would inform the public, build relationships between groups through dialog, and provide a framework for coordinated action.
Initially, Nelson had planned Earth Day as a peaceful national demonstration with the goal of showing the nation and DC the depth of support for the evolving environmental movement. He later recalled, “While I was confident that a nationwide peaceful demonstration of concern would be impressive, I was not quite prepared for the overwhelming response that occurred on that day. Two thousand colleges and universities, ten thousand high schools and grade schools, and several thousand communities in all, more than twenty million Americans participated in one of the most exciting and significant grassroots efforts in the history of this country.”
In the decade that followed the first Earth Day numerous laws were passed, creating the foundation of environmental rules and regulations we take for granted today. They are,
- the Clean Air Act,
- the Water Quality Improvement Act,
- the Water Pollution and Control Act Amendments,
- the Resource Recovery Act,
- the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act,
- the Toxic Substances Control Act,
- the Occupational Safety and Health Act,
- the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act,
- the Endangered Species Act,
- the Safe Drinking Water Act,
- the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and
- the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
It is important to note that these laws and many others were passed with bipartisan votes and signed into law by both Democrat and Republican Presidents. Today’s fractured legislature and its relationship with the President is dramatically different.
However, even by 1980, the public’ environmental concerns and political dynamics were changing. The importance of Earth Day would grow both as a demonstration of the public’s awareness of the environmental crisis and as a marker for the progress that was and was not made.
PART 2 picks up with the continuing growth of the Environmental Movement and the rise of corporate aggression against it.
Resources
EarthDay.Org Even when it isn’t April 22, it’s still an earth day. EarthDay.Org is the world’s largest recruiter to the environmental movement, working with more than 150,000 partners in over 192 countries to drive positive action for our planet. A good source of info and opportunities to get involved.
Earth Day ’70: What It Meant, Gaylord Nelson, 04/1980, EPA Journal, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, reflects on what led up to the first Earth Day, what it accomplished, and the challenges that still existed in 1980 (and continue now).
How an Oil Spill Inspired the First Earth Day, Lila Thulin, 04/22/2019, Smithsonian Magazine
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) This the EPA’s portal page for NEPA history and information.