The History of Earth Day
 

By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day
 


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 How the First Earth Day Came About

Day Founder Gaylord Nelson passed away July 2005 at the age of 89. He believed strongly that education is the key to changing people's attitudes about the environment and he devoted much of his energy to that challenge. In the section below, which he prepared not long before his death, he answered some of the questions he was most often asked about the how he conceived the first Earth Day, why and what his hopes for the observance were.

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, my idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. 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 people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

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. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment? 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. 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...."

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.

36 years later, Earth Day is being celebrated around the globe.

  • The nation's air is cleaner today than it was 36 years ago. Emissions of has decreased by 54 percent.

  • 1,200 abandoned industrial sites have been restored, protecting public health, leveraging jobs, and revitalizing communities.

  • The trend of loss wetland has been reversed. 832,000 acres of wetlands have been restored, created, protected and improved.

  • The Clean Air Mercury Rule will reduce mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. When fully implemented, the missions of mercury will be reduced by 70%, from 48 tons a year to 15 tons..

  • Since 1978, 35 endangered species have recovered- 15 in the last 7 years.

  • The National Wildlife Refuge System is the world’s oldest and largest network of lands dedicated to conserving fish and wildlife has grown to 93 million acres.



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