April 22, 1970 was the 1st Earth Day and a movement was born!
Every year on April 22 the world celebrates Earth Day. Small business, community groups, corporations and government agencies around the world join together finding common ground in cultivating projects that support a healthy Planet Earth.
April 22, Earth Day, is birthday of the modern environmental movement - the beginning of awareness that we, the inhabitants of Planet Earth, need to care for our environment, use natural resources responsibly, control pollution and volunteer to improve the Planet through socially responsibility economic development and government policies that support sustainability and a healthy natural environment to live, work and play in for generations.
In the 1970s scant attention was paid to the “environment.” Protests were part of American culture for movements on Civil Right, Women’s Rights and the Viet Nam War – but protecting Planet Earth was not yet part of the collective consciousness. Most people took Plant Earth for granted thinking that natural resources were unlimited.
There was no economic or social awareness of what the world would be experiencing in the mid 20th Century modernization in America, nor the impacts of the rapid growth of developing countries or realities of global population explosions. All were silently taking a toll on Planet Earth - the beginning of a tipping point for the Environment that was compromised and unsustainable.
American cars were gas guzzlers, utility companies and factories belched out polluted smoke, sludge waste went into our rivers and no one was talking about renewable energy or oil dependency. “Environment” was a spelling bee word not a news headline.
So what changed? Inspiration and education came thru the pen of Rachel Carson, a established natural history writer, who’s 1962 book Silent Spring, a New York Times bestseller and Book of The Month Club selection, was serialized in The New Yorker magazine. Carson’s writings brought awareness to how the modern chemical industry was having a detrimental effect on environment and the lack of any independent oversight in protecting the public interest from these effects.
Carson raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment and public health. Her writing is considered to have launched the “environmental movement” whose first victory was the ban of pesticide DDT in 1972. Silent Spring is #5 on the Modern Library List of Best 20th-Century Nonfiction and is named one of the 25 greatest science books of all time by the editors of Discover Magazine.
The idea of Earth Day began in 1970 with Senator Gaylord Nelson who, along with a conservative Congressman Peter McCloskey, established a public event that was to be a “national teach-in on the environment.” This event capitalized on the emerging consciousness of caring for the world we live in and channeled the energy of the war protest movement and putting environmental concerns front and center.
April 22 1970 was the 1st Earth Day and a movement was born. Two million Americans took to the streets, public parks, and auditoriums to educate, learn and demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. The broadcast media had coverage on the evening news and in print the headline Earth Day became part of our national dialog.
Massive rallies were held coast to coast with support across political parties, city and country folk, all economic levels and labor and industry coming together in a collective raising of environmental conscientious.
On college and universities campuses protests brought attention to the deterioration of the environment. Groups who had 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 came together in a unified voice brining attention and action to the “environmental movement.”
The attention and awareness created on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day, led to the establishment of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.
Earth Day went global in 1990 when over 200 million people in 141 countries celebrated and raised awareness around the planet lifting the “environmental movement” to the world stage promoting the economics of recycling. In Earth Day 2000 the focus was on global warming and clean energy solutions with more countries and people celebrating Earth Day.
In 2011 the US EPA and environmental laws are being challenged by some and championed by many for creating public policy that supports responsible and sustainable stewardship of the environment. Recent energy industry accidents like the BP oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico and the Japanese nuclear reactor disaster brings attention to how we live and the need to find environmentally sound solutions to building a sustainable world.
