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History
of Earth Day
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How
the First Earth Day Came About
By
Senator
Gaylord Nelson,
Founder of Earth Day
What
was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I
am most frequently asked.
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Actually,
the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting 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.
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. The idea was to persuade President
Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national
conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with
Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President.
The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in
September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the
issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the
idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.
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I
continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in
some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental
degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the
political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be
found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the
politicians were not.
After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would
thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass
before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a
conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time,
anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread
to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to
me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to
our environment?
I
was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the
general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the
environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force
this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a
try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the
spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on
behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire
services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric.
It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries
poured in from all across the country. 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. For the next
four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John
Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.
Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York
Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the
astonishing proliferation of environmental events: "Rising concern
about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an
intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the
war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental
problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide
environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord
Nelson is planned."
It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day.
It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the
capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone
calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before
Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space
for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college
students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.
Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots
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.
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