The following column is the opinion and analysis of the writer.
Even as the unfolding pandemic dominates the news cycle, many of us will pause on April 22 and celebrate the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. The environmental movement that began on college campuses and in the streets of America that day has forever changed public policy, industrial practices and human behavior worldwide. And it guided me to a career that did not yet have a name.
As the 1960s came to a close, Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson correctly read American sentiment in favor of tough action on a growing list of environmental abuses — oil spills, burning rivers, blackened skies, and disappearing species to name a few. Influenced by the success of national anti-war rallies, Nelson believed it possible to entice equal or greater fervor on behalf of a popular cause, not just against a societal bête noire like Vietnam. He hired Denis Hayes to lead the campaign.
In the days before email, and instant messaging, Hayes and his small team built momentum the old-fashioned way with letters, phone calls, advertising and shoe leather. Their Earth Day manifesto called for “a day to reexamine the ethic of individual progress at mankind’s expense — a day to challenge the corporate and governmental leaders who promise change but who shortchange the necessary programs. April 22 seeks a future worth living.”
It could have been written yesterday.
Hayes’ efforts paid off as 20 million Americans took to the streets to prove Nelson right.
At the University of Arizona, where I was about to graduate that spring, the first Earth Day needed organizing help. One of my instructors linked me up with a grad student already in touch with the national Earth Day campaign. Soon, we began to plan what might be done on campus.
Professors hurried together classroom seminars on everything from population control to soil hydrology. Cars were banned from the Mall while the Sierra Club and Zero Population Growth staffed tables alongside our own thin band of Earth Day pamphleteers. Trying to answer questions at a table on the Mall that day I remember thinking this had never been done before.
Elsewhere in Tucson, there were more rallies and marches. A cheeky group of Flowing Wells grade-school students held fundraisers and sent small checks to automobile, mining and industrial companies encouraging them to step up research on pollution. When the sun set that April afternoon, Earth Day had been a success.
Fast-forward a few months and the brand new EPA was opening its doors in Washington, D.C. After graduate school, I signed on with this new federal agency and set out on a career in the environmental field.
Out the rearview mirror, we now see that the range of environmental laws the country passed in the ensuing years, while stunning and successful for the time, were framed for problems as they were understood over 40 years ago.
Our problem statement is now more wickedly complex. The inevitability of climate disruption alone acts as a multiplier of all the conventional threats we set out to remedy decades ago. Our 50-year head start has largely evaporated as threats continue to magnify.
Yet, in home isolation these days I learn that human quiet is allowing the earth to heal almost before our eyes in the form of cleaner skies, clearer water and less atmospheric carbon.
We’ve seen more visible progress in 50 days than we can remember over the last 50 years — not the way we would want it to unfold for sure, but we no longer must just dream of that better world.
Returning to old ways should be less imaginable now and perhaps the promise of that first Earth Day may yet be realized.
Tim Steller's column: Tucson's biggest homeless camp faces upcoming clear-out
