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11 April 2005
What is Earth Day?
Earth Day and the Rise of Environmental Consciousness
Earth Day, April 22, is the annual celebration of the environment and a
time to assess the work still needed to protect the natural gifts of our
planet. Earth Day has no central organizing force behind it though several
nongovernmental organizations work to keep track of the thousands of local
events in schools and parks that mark the day. Earth Day is observed
around the world, although nowhere is it a national holiday. In the United
States, it affirms that environmental awareness is part of the country's
consciousness and that the idea of protecting the environment - once the
province of a few conservationists - has moved from the extreme to the
mainstream of American thought.
This was not always the case. In the 19th century Americans, blessed with
a vast land rich in natural resources, lived with the notion that fresh
fields were always just over the horizon. When one exhausted the soil or
forests or coal of a given place it was possible to move on to another. As
industry boomed in the early 20th century people accepted without question
skies blackened from smokestack emissions and rivers fouled with
industrial waste. As early as the mid-1930s - and again in the 1950's -
Ohio's Cuyahoga River, running through America's industrial heartland, was
set ablaze by burning chemical waste from factories built upon its banks.
There was no public outcry. Few people even noticed.
During the 1960s public attitudes began to change. In 1962 a marine
biologist named Rachel Carson published "Silent Spring." The title
referred to a future without birds and described in plain language
devastating long-term effects of highly toxic pesticides and other
chemical agents then commonly used in American agriculture, industry and
daily life. The book was a surprise best-seller. In 1968 Apollo
astronauts, returning from their pioneering orbital flight around the
moon, photographed for the first time the planet Earth as a whole. This
image of the Earth - small, fragile, beautiful, and unique - was quickly
imprinted on the psyches of millions. In 1969 industrial runoff in the
Cuyahoga River again caught fire. This time the public reaction was
immediate and intense. Cleveland, Ohio, where the fire occurred, became a
national laughing-stock, and the satirical song "Burn On, Big River, Burn
On" was heard on radios across the country. In that same year the U.S.
Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), declaring a
"national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony
between man and his environment."
Concurrent with this slow building of environmental awareness was the
increasingly vocal opposition to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.
Public demonstrations against the war -- particularly on college campuses
-- gave impetus to the idea that organized challenges to the "status-quo"
could in fact change public policy and behavior.
Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin and a long time
conservationist, was one who understood that the methods developed for use
in the anti-war protest could succeed in other areas as well. "At the
time," Nelson later wrote, "there was a great deal of turmoil on the
college campuses over the Vietnam War. Protests, called anti-war
teach-ins, were being widely held on campuses across the nation.... It
suddenly occurred to me, why not have a nationwide teach-in on the
environment? That was the origin of Earth Day."
Nelson returned to Washington and began promoting Earth Day to state
governors, mayors of major cities, editors of college newspapers, and,
importantly, to Scholastic Magazine, which is circulated in U.S.
elementary and high schools. In September, 1969 Nelson formally announced that there would be a "national environmental teach-in" sometime in the Spring of 1970. "The wire services carried the story nationwide," recalled
Nelson. "The response was dramatic.... Telegrams, letters, and telephone
inquiries poured in from all over the nation. Using my Senate staff, I ran
Earth Day activities out of my office. By December, the movement had
expanded so rapidly that it became necessary to open an office in
Washington to serve as a national clearinghouse for Earth Day inquiries
and activities...
"Earth Day achieved what I had hoped for. The objective was to get a
nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it
would shake the political arena. It was a gamble, but it worked. An
estimated 20 million people participated in peaceful demonstrations all
across the country. Ten thousand grade schools and high schools, two
thousand colleges, and one thousand communities were involved... That was
the remarkable thing that became Earth Day."
Groundbreaking federal legislation followed the success of the first Earth
Day. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970,
followed by the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act of 1972, and the
Endangered Species Act of 1973. Among the many far-reaching provisions of
these bills was the requirement that automobiles use unleaded gasoline,
achieve a minimum number of miles-per-gallon of gasoline and be equipped
with catalytic converters to reduce the amount of toxic fumes released by
automobile exhaust.
Then, in the wake of this legislative success, Earth Day seemed to
disappear. Though annual celebrations continued, they failed to match the
size and enthusiasm of the first year. Earth Day seemed to have become a
relic of the protest days of the early 1970s.
Yet the spirit of Earth Day continued. Environmental organizations grew in
size and power. Groups such as Greenpeace, formed in Canada in 1971,
adopted principles of non-violent civil disobedience to raise public
consciousness about dwindling whale populations and the risks of nuclear
power. The Nature Conservancy, formed in 1951, re-dedicated itself in the
early 1970s to the "preservation of natural diversity" and began to buy
undeveloped land for use as nature preserves. Venerable institutions such
as the Sierra Club and the National Audubon Society vigorously brought
suits against logging companies to slow the destruction of old-growth
forests. Funded by public contributions and staffed with lawyers and
educators as well as scientists and naturalists, nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) became aggressive watchdogs for the environment.
At home, Americans, often prompted by their children, began to separate
their household trash for recycling. By the late 1980s recycling programs
were established in many communities. By the mid-1990s these municipal
recycling programs were paying for themselves, the amount of trash dumped
into landfills was in noticeable decline, and more than 20 percent of
America's municipal trash was being converted into useful products.
Corporations, ever conscious of the desires of the consumer - and the
bottom line of profits - began to promote themselves as being
environmentally friendly. Many firms adopted sensible business practices
that increased efficiency and reduced the amounts of industrial waste.
Earth Day came back in a big way in 1990. Led by Denis Hayes, a primary
organizer of the first Earth Day, Earth Day 1990 was international in
scope. More than 200 million people around the world - ten times the
number in 1970 - participated in events that recognized that the
environment had finally become a universal public concern. The global
momentum continued in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment
and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, where an
unprecedented number of governments and NGOs agreed on a far-ranging
program to promote sustainable development.
The 25th anniversary of the first Earth Day in 1995 was a time to assess
environmental progress. In Western countries the news seemed good - air
and water were cleaner, forests were expanding and many other
environmental indicators were up as well. The sometimes volatile
combination of legislation, lawsuits brought by NGOs, public education and
more efficient business practices had made a noticeable and positive
effect on the condition of the environment.
But there were conflicting views on just how good this news was.
Environmental reporter Gregg Easterbrook wrote in The New Yorker magazine
that environmental laws "along with a vast array of private efforts
spurred by environmental consciousness...have been a stunning success....
Environmental regulations, far from being burdensome and expensive, have
proved to be strikingly effective, have cost less than anticipated, and
have made the economies of the countries that have put them into effect
stronger, not weaker."
Environment magazine, a leading NGO journal, offered a gloomier
assessment: "Earth Day... has neither spawned a permanently active
citizenry nor transformed the general malaise that undermines faith in
democratic accountability. Although environmentalism has made great
strides since 1970, institutionally as well as in public consciousness,
environmental security... today remains even more elusive than 25 years
ago."
Earth Day, and the awareness it embodies, continues today.
What began in 1970 as a protest movement has evolved into a global
celebration of the environment and commitment to its protection. The
history of Earth Day mirrors the growth of environmental awareness over
the last three decades, and the legacy of Earth Day is the certain
knowledge that the environment is a universal concern.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
