Earth Day Memories--38 years

Participant in Earth Day, 1970.Photo: EPA History Office


Although I can’t say I remember all the intervening ones, I do remember the first Earth Day ever which I participated in. I was a junior at Stanford and it was 1970. It was a cool, Spring Day (March 21, the first day of spring) in San Francisco when I marched with a few friends and many thousand others to protest the deterioration of the environment. I didn’t remember this, but San Francisco’s protest was actually a month earlier than it was held elsewhere when 20 million participated in thousands of locations. At the time, I was definitely politically naive but totally caught up in the spirit of nonviolence and a desire to protect the environment. The day is etched in my memory in part due to a few photographs taken that day in San Francisco. I’m traveling as I write this, otherwise I would try to post a photo or two (perhaps I’ll add one later). PS--see post above for photos

Not long after that first earth day, came the US invasion of Cambodia, the Kent State shootings and the student strike of 1970. It was a memorable spring.
Here are a few interesting links I found when I goggled “Early Day history”:
http://earthday.envirolink.org/history.html
http://www.earthday.net/resources/history.aspx
And here’s an excerpt from the second one:

History of Earth Day
Earth Day -- April 22 -- each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, "Bridge Over Troubled Water," Apollo 13, the Beatles' last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, the birth of Mariah Carey, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina -- an incident not acknowledged for 18 years.

At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.
Earth Day 1970 turned that all around.

On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.