Earth Day 2010
by Mary Downer
Forty years after the first Earth Day, the world is in greater peril than ever. While climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, it also presents the greatest opportunity - an unprecedented opportunity to build a healthy, prosperous, clean energy economy now and for the future.
Earth Day 2010 can be a turning point to advance climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy and green jobs. Earth Day Network is galvanizing millions who make personal commitments to sustainability. Earth Day 2010 is a pivotal opportunity for individuals, corporations and governments to join together and create a global green economy. Join the more than one billion people in 190 countries that are taking action for Earth Day.
According to Senator Gaylord Nelson, the idea evolved over time, beginning in 1962.
“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 wrote in a statement to a Utah paper. “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.”
In 1963, he persuaded then-President John F. Kennedy to do a national conservation tour, which crisscrossed 11 states over the course of 5 days. Sadly, the tour did not get much coverage. In 1969, at the height of protest against the Vietnam War, “teach-ins” had become common, and Nelson latched on to the idea. On April 22, 1970, it all came together. Nelson had hired a young staff, led by Denis Hayes, to coordinate these “teach-in” activities across the country. Hayes’ staff included people from diverse backgrounds - members of the Robert F. Kennedy Campaign, activists and organizers in the civil rights struggle. The group even purchased a full page advertisement in the New York Times in January 1970, which announced the very first “Earth Day.” And the idea gained traction, despite the organization’s small, $125,000 budget.
Some 20 million Americans participated in the very first Earth Day, in thousands of events across the country. It was especially popular in schools; the National Education Association estimated that 10 million middle- and high school students participated in Earth Day activities.
Nelson credited a “Spontaneous response at the grass-roots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.”
“It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country,” Nelson recounted in an essay shortly before he died in July 2005 at 89. “The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance.”
With coordinated events taking place across the country, it is generally credited with launching the modern environmental movement. Following Earth Day, Congress passed some of the most important environmental laws, like the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and amended others, like the Clean Air Act of 1963.
