Avenue Vine

I think it started way back before the 60s’. The 1960s had been a very dynamic period for ecology in the US, in both theory and practice. It was in the mid-1960s that Congress passed the sweeping Wilderness Act, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas asked, "Who speaks for the trees?" Pre-1960 grassroots activism against DDT in Nassau County, NY, had inspired Rachel Carson to write her shocking bestseller Silent Spring (1962).

Mosquito control they called it. Us kids would ride our bikes in and out of the fog trailing behind those
UC pickups as it spread through out the neighborhood–crashing into trees–being warned by parents to look out for cars, etc. No warning from our parents what sinister future the future might hold.

Little did we know then and little do we know now. We can talk about ecology ad nauseam, but acting that’s the step, as a planet, we just don’t seem to be getting it right yet...

Earth Day 1970:
The story goes that Earth Day was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson after a trip he took to Santa Barbara right after that horrific oil spill off our coast in 1969. He was so outraged by what he saw that he went back to Washington and passed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth.

Gaylord NelsonResponding to widespread environmental degradation, Gaylord Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin, called for an environmental teach-in, or Earth Day, to be held on April 22, 1970. Over 20 million people participated that year, and Earth Day is now observed each year on April 22 by more than 500 million people and national governments in 175 countries. Senator Nelson, an environmental activist, took a leading role in organizing the celebration, hoping to demonstrate popular political support for an environmental agenda. He modeled it on the highly effective Vietnam War protests of the time.

Senator Nelson selected Denis Hayes, a Harvard University graduate student, as the National Coordinator of activities. Hayes said he wanted Earth Day to "bypass the traditional political process." The nationwide event included opposition to the Vietnam War on the agenda. Pete Seeger was a keynote speaker and performer at the event held in Washington DC. Paul Newman and Ali McGraw attended the event held in New York City

The significance of the date:
~April 22 is also the birthday of Julius Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day, a national tree-planting holiday started in 1872. Arbor Day became a legal holiday in Nebraska in 1885, to be permanently observed on April 22. According to the National Arbor Day Foundation "the most common day for the state observances is the last Friday in April . . . but a number of state Arbor Days are at other times to coincide with the best tree planting weather." It has since been largely eclipsed by the more widely observed Earth Day, except in Nebraska, where it originated.
~April 22, 1970 was the 100th birthday of Vladmir Lenin. Time reported that some suspected the date was not a coincidence, but a clue that the event was "a Communist trick," and quoted a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution saying, "Subversive elements plan to make American children live in an environment that is good for them." J. Edgar Hoover, director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, may have found the Lenin connection intriguing; it was alleged the FBI conducted surveilance at the 1970 demonstrations. The idea that the date was chosen to celebrate Lenin's centenary still persists in some quarters, although Lenin was never noted as an environmentalist.

The Aftermath of Earth Day 1970:
Earth Day proved popular in the United States and around the world. The first Earth Day had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. More importantly, it "brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform."

Senator Nelson stated that Earth Day "worked" because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. 20 million demonstrators and thousands of schools and local communities participated. He directly credited the first Earth Day with persuading U.S. politicians that environmental legislation had a substantial, lasting constituency. Many important laws were passed by the Congress in the wake of the 1970 Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act, laws to protect drinking water, wild lands and the ocean, and the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Now observed in 175 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, according to whom Earth Day is now "the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a half billion people every year." Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes.

Read to learn
Participate to make a difference

the environmental handbook, Oliver Ormerod, Jensen, American heritage, Joan Paterson Kerr, Murray Belsky, Garrett De Bell; Compiled by Garrett De Bell; Published 1970, Ballantine Books
367 pages - Original from the University of Michigan

The Population Bomb (A Sierra Club-Ballantine Book; by Paul R. Ehrlich

Healing the Planet: Strategies for Resolving the Environmental Crisis, Paul R. Ehrlich, Anne H. Ehrlich

The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War, Paul R. Ehrlich, Carl Sagan, Donald Kennedy, Walter Orr Roberts

International Environmental Politics: The Limits of Green Diplomacy, By Lee-Anne Broadhead

EARTH DAY NETWORK: www.earthday.net