Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise - Hardcover

Nelson, Gaylord; Wozniak, Paul A.; Campbell, Susan M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299180409 ISBN 13: 9780299180409

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

Synopsis

    Gaylord Nelson is known and respected throughout the world as a founding father of the modern environmental movement and creator of one of the most successful and influential public awareness campaigns ever undertaken on behalf of global stewardship: Earth Day.
    Now in his eighties, Nelson delivers a timely and urgent message with the same eloquence with which he has articulated the nation’s environmental ills through the decades. He details the planet’s most critical concerns—from species and habitat losses to global climate changes and population growth. In outlining his strategy for planetary health, he inspires citizens to reassert the environment as a top priority.
    A book for anyone who cares deeply about our environment and wants to know what we can and must do now to save it, Beyond Earth Day is a classic guide by one of the natural world’s great defenders.

About this title

About the Authors

Gaylord Nelson (1916–2005) was governor of Wisconsin, served in the U.S. Senate from 1963 to 1981, and worked for the Wilderness Society. He originated the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 for his contributions to the environmental protection movement.

Paul A. Wozniak is a member of the Board of Governors at the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame and a Wisconsin conservation historian.

Susan Campbell, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is communications manager for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.

From the Back Cover

"You show me pollution and I will show you people who are not paying their own way, people who are stealing from the public, people who are getting the public to pay their costs of production. All environmental pollution is a subsidy."-Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

"The life of the planet and all of its inhabitants have been positively affected by the extraordinary vision and work of Senator Gaylord Nelson. The remarkable agenda he put forth in 1970 is ever more salient today, his wisdom and words needed now more than ever."-Paul G. Hawken, Natural Capital Institute, author of The Ecology of Commerce

Reviews

After Wisconsinite Nelson began his 18-year stint as a senator in 1963, he was shocked to discover how severe air and water pollution had become. Recognizing that people everywhere shared his concerns (he cites the infamous day in 1969 when the toxic Cuyahoga River burst into towering flames), he thought, "Why not organize a huge, grassroots protest about what was happening to our environment?" Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, and in its aftermath crucial federal initiatives put a halt to the worst offenses. But three decades later, thanks to a burgeoning human population, myriad sources of toxic waste, corporate greed, and general complacency, Nelson, as avid and well informed as ever, observes that we face renewed and increasingly dire environmental threats. Along with his coauthors, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who provides a rousing foreword, the Earth Day founder presents exceptionally lucid explanations of a host of current ecoissues, and calls for a renewed effort to keep these potentially catastrophic predicaments visible and their possible solutions viable through education and citizen action. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Beyond Earth Day

Fulfilling the PromiseBy Gaylord Nelson Susan Campbell Paul Wozniak

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Copyright © 2002 Gaylord Nelson, Susan Cambell, and Paul Wozniak
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-299-18040-9

Contents

List of Illustrations.....................................................................ixForeword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr..........................................................xiIntroduction..............................................................................xixPart 1. The Earth and Its DayChapter 1. Earth Day: When the People Spoke...............................................3Chapter 2. Report Card on the Earth.......................................................15Part 2. Imperiled PlanetChapter 3. Windows on the World...........................................................23Chapter 4. Vanishing Resources............................................................50Chapter 5. An Invisible Threat............................................................87Part 3. Environmentalism: Then and NowChapter 6. Complacent Planet?.............................................................105Part 4. An Environmental Agenda for the Twenty-first CenturyChapter 7. Achieving Sustainability.......................................................133An Appeal.................................................................................159Appendix 1: Letter to John F. Kennedy.....................................................163Appendix 2: Introduction to "Environmental Agenda for Earth Day 1970".....................169Notes.....................................................................................177Acknowledgments...........................................................................191Index.....................................................................................193

Chapter One

Earth Day

When the People Spoke

If we have the will, the environmental challenge can be met. -1970

Earth Day took root on April 22, 1970, and has since spread across the country as an annual event in thousands of schools, churches, and local communities as well as in many countries around the world.

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked. Having spoken on environmental issues in some two dozen states during the twelve years before that first Earth Day, I knew the public was far ahead of the political establishment in its concern for what was happening to the environment. The signs of degradation were everywhere-polluted rivers, lakes, ocean beaches, and air.

The goal of Earth Day was to inspire a public demonstration so big it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and force the environmental issue onto the national political agenda. That is what happened.

The idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. It had been troubling me for several years 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 lime-light once and for all. The idea was to persuade President John F. Kennedy to give visibility to the 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.

By coincidence, the Senate scheduled a vote on ratification of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty for the same date-September 24, 1963-that the president chose to begin his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour. The president delayed his departure until I and Senators Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, and Joe Clark had voted on the ratification so that we could join him for the first leg of the conservation tour. When we took off on Air Force One, the plane was loaded with press and TV reporters. But the hot news was ratification of the Test Ban Treaty, which President Kennedy strongly supported. At every stop during the next five days the test ban was what the news media wanted to hear about-they didn't know much of anything about environmental issues, and their editors knew even less.

Although the tour did not succeed in putting the issue on the national political agenda, it would be the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day. During the next few years, I spoke to audiences all across the country. The evidence of environmental deterioration was all around us, 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. Why not organize a huge, grass-roots protest about what was happening to our environment?

It was a time when people could see, smell, and taste pollution. The air above major cities such as New York and Los Angeles was orange, Lake Erie was proclaimed dead, and backyard birds were dying from a chemical known as DDT. Public interest was further piqued by two environmental catastrophes that captured headlines from coast to coast earlier that year. The first was a large oil tanker spill offshore Santa Barbara that left the public with images of sea birds coated in oil. Then in June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River-slick with oil and grease and littered with debris-caught fire and shot flames high into the air in Cleveland. That image, widely circulated in the popular press, burned its way into the nation's collective memory as the poster child for the environmental atrocities of the time.

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 national political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a September 1969 conference in Seattle, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment, and I invited everyone to participate. The date April 22 was chosen because it was before the summer recess for grade and high schools, and it avoided exam time on college campuses. I believed the support of these groups would be critical to any successful demonstration on behalf of the environment. That turned out to be a good guess.

The date aroused the suspicions of the conservative John Birch Society, however, which perceived some sinister communist plot was under way. Within a week of the announcement that April 22 would be Earth Day, the society charged that the event was "Sen. Nelson's ill-concealed attempt to honor the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lenin." Obviously, the John Birch Society was better informed about Lenin than I was. This coincidence of timing continued to pop up here and there. The day before the first Earth Day the Los Angeles City Council adopted an Earth Day resolution by one vote over the objection of a member who argued against passing such a resolution on Lenin's birthday. In 1990, while on a speaking tour celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Earth Day, Notre Dame students told me the school had received a letter from the John Birch Society demanding to know why a good Catholic university such as Notre Dame would celebrate the birth of Lenin. If nothing else, the Birch Society should be awarded a medal of distinction for dogged and obtuse persistence.

The wire services carried the story about the planned Earth Day demonstration 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 for expressing their concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air-and they did so with tremendous 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.

One of my most immediate problems was to raise money to cover expenses. Within a few days, environmental lawyer Larry Rockefeller came to my office to inquire about the planned demonstration. After he left, one of my staff handed me an envelope from him. It contained a check for $1,000-the first Earth Day contribution. Shortly thereafter, I called two old friends in the labor movement, Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, and George Meany, president of the American Federation of Labor. They each contributed $2,000. That gave us start-up money. Speaking fees produced another $18,000, and Sydney Howe of the Conservation Foundation came to our rescue with $20,000. More contributions came in from individuals who were supportive of the cause, and we ran the whole show with just $185,000.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, the New York Times reported that students from Maine to Hawaii were campaigning on environmental ills ranging from water pollution to global population and were rolling up their sleeves. Times reporter Gladwin Hill captured the mood of the time:

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.... Already students are looking forward to the first "D-Day" of the movement, next April 22-when a nationwide environmental "teach-in," being coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson, is planned.

It was clear we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. Grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paperwork, and inquiries. In 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.

The environment was seen as an issue that bridged generational, political, and social gaps. Politicians soon heeded the call. In the months preceding the event, my office received dozens of requests for speeches from congressional colleagues who had never spoken on the environment. When Earth Day finally arrived, Congress adjourned for the day because so many members were participating in the day's events. Again, the New York Times spoke to Earth Day's ability to transcend long-established boundaries, reporting that "Conservatives were for it. Liberals were for it. Democrats, Republicans and independents were for it. So were the ins, the outs, the Executive and Legislative branches of government."

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor the resources to organize the 20 million demonstrators who participated from thousands of schools and local communities. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

Every year around April 22, the press abounds with news stories and columns pontificating about how corporations have co-opted Earth Day and are perverting the occasion into a self-promotion about their concern for the environment. One can pull up Earth Day articles from five, ten, or twenty years ago and find the same charges. They all miss the point of what is actually happening in the real world of changing attitudes, expanding concerns, and public understanding of the environmental challenges we face.

When I planned the first Earth Day, only one major corporation contributed to our national effort-Arm and Hammer. Corporate leadership there was far ahead of the times in its concern about our environmental future. Things have not stood still since 1970. Corporate leadership at the top and middle management levels has gone through the first Earth Day and many since. Certainly not all have become environmentalists. Most are more sensitive to the issue, however, and many others are better informed and committed to forging a sustainable society-defined as a society that meets our present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. It is true that business leadership has a long way to go, but it is also true that it has come a long way since the first Earth Day.

The following article, published by E Magazine on Earth Day 1993, had this to say about Earth Day's legacy:

Brace yourself. Earth Day's back and, some would say better than ever. Once again, people will plant thousands of trees ... thousands will gather for poetry readings, speeches, protests, concerts, recycling contests, more speeches.

And the criticism will flow. Local TV and print media will again dismiss Earth Day as "vaguely reminiscent of the 60s," pointedly noting that events again failed to attract the numbers of 1990. Professional environmentalists parading through shows as disparate as "Donahue," "Crossfire," and National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" will undoubtedly remind us that what really matters is what happens the other 364 days of the year. Green-peace will protest the "greenwashing" ad campaigns of companies like DuPont and GM, two corporations that have aggressively capitalized on the presence of Earth Day. Big business, they will say, co-opted Earth Day.

Both media and many environmentalists will again miss the real point-and the real audience-of Earth Day. TV news action cameras will scour the big events in Washington, San Francisco and New York but will miss millions of smaller ones happening everywhere. Here is the real Earth Day, for April 22 has found a permanent home on the calendar of thousands of schools worldwide. Every significant Earth Day festival features activities geared for kids and in many families it's the kids who bring their parents to the Earth Day celebrations. Big business did not co-opt Earth Day. Kids did.

Earth Day is no longer a special event. It's just part of the curriculum. In many of our nation's schools, Earth Day provides a huge boost to the small but fierce community of environmental educators. It gives visibility to the school, offers teachers the chance for unforgettable teaching moments and lets kids connect their work to their community. On Earth Day, the classroom plugs into the world.

We will not succeed in forging an economically and environmentally sustainable society until all key social, political, economic, and religious groups are on board. If labor, business, or any other major group is opposed to doing what is necessary to achieve sustainability, it probably will not happen.

By the same token, we should not be blind to the fact that, for some companies, Earth Day is merely an occasion to put on their Sunday best one day a year. It is evolving, however. Whether a corporation wants to appear green for public recognition, or for perfectly honest reasons, it doesn't matter. The fact is, we're gaining. If they are deceiving the public, let them be exposed in the political marketplace. Keep them honest if you can. They can read the science as well as we, but an environmentalist can't go out and tell businesspeople that they must mend their ways and expect them to listen.

No one is pure. We all make compromises in different aspects of our lives where the environment is concerned, and it is self-defeating to draw rigid lines of purity when trying to build a political consensus.

In short, the company that buys into Earth Day once a year but that fails to clean up its act plays the same game as the individual who picks up litter one day a year but fails to be a good steward of the planet every other day. Earth Day is not a day of penance for America. It was founded on a spirit of desire and a sense of duty-as a means to an end, not as an end. Let us keep that spirit alive and our goal clear.

Contrary to what some Earth Day critics today might say, my thinking was not that a one-day demonstration would convince people of the need to protect the environment. I envisioned a continuing national drive to clean up our environment and set new priorities for a livable America. Earth Day was to be the catalyst.

The public spoke with one voice at that first event, and its message was heard. The same year, President Richard Nixon created the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Congress passed an amended federal Clean Air Act. In the decade that followed, twenty-eight other significant environmental laws were enacted, more environmental legislation than Congress had passed in all the years since the adoption of the Constitution. Some of those laws built upon and strengthened earlier measures, such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Others set the foundation for environmental education in the schools and basic environmental protections that many Americans now take for granted, among them the Safe Drinking Water Act, Endangered Species Act, and Marine Mammal Protection Act (see sidebar).

That first Earth Day showed that environmental activism on a broad scale was not only possible but powerful, as people across the spectrum of American life demanded that the right to a decent environment be adopted as a fundamental aim of society. The demonstration marked more than a national holiday for the Earth. It was about the people sending a message and setting an agenda. It was about sparking a landmark grassroots movement.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Beyond Earth Dayby Gaylord Nelson Susan Campbell Paul Wozniak Copyright © 2002 by Gaylord Nelson, Susan Cambell, and Paul Wozniak. Excerpted by permission.
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0299180409
• ISBN 13: 9780299180409
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224