WHO KNEW the Concept of Earth Day Originated with a Democratic Senator Who then Collaborated with a Republican Congressman to Bring the Concept to Life?
WHO KNEW the Concept of Earth Day Originated with a Democratic Senator Who then Collaborated with a Republican Congressman to Bring the Concept to Life?
In January of 1969, an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, CA, dumped 3-4 million gallons of oil into the ocean over an 11-day period. It was the worst oil spill in US history, at the time, and remains the worst oil spill off the coast of CA and the third worst overall in US history. That same year, in June 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH, caught fire after years of being polluted by industrial waste. Elsewhere across the country, American rivers and streams were open sewers, and Lake Erie was dying. In 1962, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, in which she warned of the dangerous effects of indiscriminate pesticide use. By the late 1960s, evidence of human-caused damage to the environment was overwhelming.
Wisconsin Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson witnessed the massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. It was while watching this catastrophe unfold that he came up with the idea of Earth Day. He then partnered with California Republican Congressman Peter McCloskey to serve as co-chairman of their Earth Day program, which they called the Environmental Teach-In. They hired college student, Denis Hayes, to manage their national office.
For Sen. Nelson, Earth Day 1970 was a one-time effort which succeeded in highlighting the large, grass roots interest in environmental issues and bringing this to the attention of politicians. He wrote at the time: “…the issue had to become a part of the political dialogue of the nation before we could hope to accomplish anything.” In this, he felt, Earth Day had been a huge success. Going forward, he envisioned an “Earth Week”, which would be “an occasion each year when we can take an inventory of progress for the past year and plan for the next.” Education and understanding, he believed, were critical to gaining support and commitment to action.
Awareness of the huge damaging environmental impacts caused by industrialization eventually led to the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972. Republican President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970 and signed the Endangered Species Act into law in 1973.
Today, evidence of environmental degradation is as compelling as it was in the 1960s. Loss of biodiversity and habitat, due to over-development and climate change, as well as ongoing damage to our atmosphere and oceans due to the continued burning of fossil fuels, are accelerating. Earth Day 2025 should be, as Sen. Nelson believed, an opportunity to assess how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go to ensure the protection of our natural environment.