Earthday
How far
we’ve come and how far we need to go
In the early 1960s, Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from
Wisconsin, proposed a nationwide conservation tour to President
John F. Kennedy. The tour, which took place in September
1963, was overshadowed by other events. However, six years
later, in the summer of 1969, Nelson got the idea for a national
“teach-in” about the environment. Planning began for this
teach-in, which was dubbed Earth Day and set for April 22,
1970. A call went out. And Americans responded.
Going into
that first Earth Day, no one could have predicted what
was about to occur. School children, college students, community
leaders, public officials, and citizens mobilized a huge,
grassroots effort. By April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans,
or 10 percent of our nation’s population in that year, took
part.
This demonstration for the environment brought about sweeping
changes at the federal and state levels. Later that same
year, President Richard Nixon established the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency by Executive Order. In the years that followed,
dozens of environmental laws were passed, protecting our
coastlines, clearing our air, and cleaning
up our water supplies.
Today, more than three decades later,
the successes of Earth Day are readily apparent. The worst
of our day-to-day environmental problems have been addressed.
However, we’re left with much to do.
- At least 218 million Americans,
more than 75 percent of our population, live within
10 miles of a polluted body of water. Much of this pollution
results not from treated end-of-pipe waste, but from
what
we now call “non-point source” pollution. In other words,
small quantities of pollutants coming from many unidentified
sources, including our own backyards where runoff includes
pesticides, pet waste, and litter.
- Energy use continues to
grow. In fact, the U.S. Department of Energy estimates
that global demand will increase by 60 percent over the
next 20 years. At the same time, global oil production
is expected
to peak and begin to decline in the same period.
- In a typical
year, 4.5 billion pounds of chemical pesticides are
used in the U.S. alone—about 17 pounds per person. Meanwhile,
concerns continue about the persistence of many of these
chemicals in the environment, as well as the health effects
of their combination in the environment and the human
body.
- Our
computerized society has become anything but paperless.
In fact, office paper consumption is rising by about
20 percent per year. By 2050, as much as half of the industrial
timber
harvested may be turned into paper.
This year, and every year, Earth Day rolls around as a reminder
that we still have work to do. The founders of Earth Day
believed that it would take many decades to “catch up”
with the pollution that already existed. We still have some
of that catching up to do. And, of course, we’ve created
new problems along the way.
The good news is that Earth Day—then
and now—is about individuals acting to make a difference.
Today, you can make that difference. Get involved. Reduce
the amount of waste in your life—conserve energy, save water,
and create less trash. Recycle all that you can, providing
useful materials to the manufacturing process. And, spread
the word, especially to children and youth. Someday soon
this will be their environment. Show them how and why to
take care of it now.
Other Resources
Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise
By Gaylord Nelson with Susan Campbell and Paul Wozniak
“Where
our planet’s health is concerned, I have always believed
that a public armed with knowledge is a public armed with
the means and the determination to find a solution.”
Introduction
“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.
All economic activity is dependent upon that environment
and its underlying resource base of forests, water, air,
soil, and minerals. When the environment is finally forced
to file for bankruptcy because its resource base has been
polluted, degraded, dissipated, and irretrievably
compromised, the economy goes into bankruptcy with it. The
economy is, after all, just a subset within the ecological
system.”
