How the First Earth Day Came About
By Senator
Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day
What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I
am most frequently asked.
Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting
in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me 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 "limelight" once and for all. The idea
was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this 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. The
President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963.
For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national
political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered
into Earth Day.
I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some
twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental
degradation was appearing everywhere, 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.
Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest
over what was happening to our environment?
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
political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of
1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the
environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the
story 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 to express its
concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they
did so with spectacular 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.
Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times
carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing
proliferation of environmental events:
"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...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is
being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental
'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is
planned...."
It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It
was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of
my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work,
inquiries, etc. In mid-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 and selected Denis
Hayes as coordinator of activities.
Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We
had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the
thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the
remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.