No one has the capability to pinpoint the single person or event that truly began the environmental movement. True to its grass roots, environmentalism began its voyage via multiple factors. Use of harmful products and unsustainable practices have long plagued our planet, and for many years few admitted, cared, or understood enough to say anything about it. Fortunately, incredible events coincided, and Earth Day was born.
The Author:
Rachel Carson is a main catalyst for the inception of Earth Day, and it's high time you knew the name, if you didn't already. Time Magazine named her as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th Century. The magazine described the author as having "a mischievous streak, a tart tongue and confidence in her own literary worth" -- a depiction all good activist should strive for. In her famous and perhaps infamous 1962 book Silent Spring, Carson exposed the beastly effects that DDT and other pesticides had on all branches of an ecosystem. Though her pen was backed by science--she had a degree in zoology, was an amateur marine biologist, and wrote for Fish and Wildlife Services for years--chemical companies laboriously disputed her claims that their products did more harm than good.
Sifting through the disputes, the public was shocked by the facts she presented in Spring and they ultimately sided with Carson, setting the wheels of environmentalism into motion.
The Politician:
Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson was as progressive as they came. His fight for safe birth control in 1970 prompted the national governmental dispute to be dubbed "The Nelson Pill Hearings." But in the early 1960s, Nelson was fighting for something that he felt had been put on the backburner of modern politics for far too long: the environment. Perhaps influenced by Carson's book, Nelson urged President John F. Kennedy to let the people know the importance of environmental protection. JFK was also a proponent of "mother earth" and the two took a five-day conservation tour around the nation in 1963. Although historians generally note the trip as being unsuccessful in boosting government mindfulness, Nelson saw Kennedy's involvement as the starting point for voicing concerns. The idea of Earth Day didn't really present itself to the senator until 1969, when he was touring the Western United States and giving talks to universities about conservation.
Nelson took notice of how grassroots movements were spawning massive anti-Vietnam protests across campuses and cities. In September 1969, exactly six years after JFK first embarked on his nationwide eco-journey, Nelson announced in Seattle that in spring of 1970 there would be a day to commemorate the earth. The media immediately caught fire and published loads of articles spreading Nelson's message and highlighting spats of regional environmental preservation.
The Photo:
On Christmas Eve, 1968, people around the globe sat in front of their TVs to see the first-ever live video feed of space from Apollo 8. At the time, the U.S. was suffering from the loss of both Martin Luther King Jr. and JFK. National sorrow was met by shock as photos from the craft revealed an image of a frail earth rising over the horizon of the moon amongst a black plane of seeming nothingness. It was beautiful but almost haunting. The message: amid the universe, the earth was inconsequential. The new perspective prompted people for the first time to realize that their planet was legitimately only a speck in a wilderness of eternity. Many came away with the notion that Earth was vulnerable, not to mention their one source of life -- and became dedicated to taking better care of it.
The Event:
In January 1969, an oil spill devastated the Santa Barbara Channel, home to an abundance of unique bio-diversity. It took just under two weeks for the leak to be found and plugged up, but the oil had already spread 800 square miles. The results were beyond devastating. Thousands of marine species, notably dolphins and seabirds, were suffocated to death and others fell on shore soused in the toxic oil. Although there were other spouts of massive environmental degradation across the country--including the Cuyahoga River outside of Cleveland catching on fire due to massive pollution--the Santa Barbara spill was one that quickly became downright disgraceful. The size of the damage was massive, and it so fast that the scope of its effect was seen in an instant. The media swarmed to its side, shadowing the destruction of the ocean for the months following, publicizing the deaths of the innocent wildlife now asphyxiating in toxins. Public outrage ensued and concern for the environment quickly spread across the country.
With the space footage and the disastrous spillage news, the stage for Senator Nelson's Earth Day event was primed.
The Success:
As history goes, the first Earth Day was a huge victory for the environmental movement, assembling massive demonstrations nationwide that amounted to a reported 20 million participants. Policy changes soon followed and in that same year President Nixon approved the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) forever predicating the environment as a top government priority.
Plus DDT was banned just two years later. Count it, Carson.
