#denis hayes

[forever70s]

Denis Hayes and Judy Moody organizing the first Earth Day events (1970)

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Earth Day History

Earth Day, first observed on 22 April 1970, is considered the beginning of the modern environmental movement.

As a response to increasing environmental concerns, like the oil spill in Santa Barbara in 1969, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day to raise awareness about how to protect the environment.

Nelson and activist Denis Hayes organized teach-ins on college campuses that included various groups and organizations, drawing inspiration from protest teach-ins of the era.

With this massive mobilization, the U.S. developed key environmental laws and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created.

Earth Day 2024 Theme

The theme of Earth Day 2024 is “Planet vs. Plastics.”

This is about fighting the big problem of plastic all over the world. Earth Day organization wants to bring people from different places together.

The goal is to make much less plastic, 60% less by 2040.

We want a future without so much plastic. This is not just about having less trash, but it is also about keeping us and the environment healthy.

[zacefronews]

Zac: If somebody is watching this right now, and they wanna get started, they wanna do something to take part - what’s a great place to start?

Denis: A really, early start for anyone is to stop generating so much waste and go out to pick up the waste that other people throw away.

[hagleyvault]

Today is Earth Day! This annual observance was born out of the efforts of the environmentalist and Wisconsin Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson (1916-2005), the California Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey (1927- ), and Denis Hayes (1944- ), a young environmental activist. Inspired and troubled by mounting environmental crises and by galvanizing works like Rachel Carson’s 1962 Silent Spring, these organizers called on the nation to organize in defense of a healthier planet. Young people were especially crucial to this vision. The first Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970, a date chosen to maximize the greatest student participation; it was a weekday that fell between Spring Break and Final Exams.

We’re celebrating our planet and our time on it today with The Case of the Wasted Water, a ca. 1970 promotional comic book from Rheem Manufacturing Company that reeled readers in with guidance about water conservation and protection in an industrialized society before pivoting to promotional matter for Rheem brand water heating and plumbing products and services.

The Case of the Wasted Water is Pam 2017.1043 in the Hagley Library’s pamphlet collection. You can view it, as well as a selection of other digitized promotional comics, online now in our Digital Archive. Just click here!

[rjzimmerman]

The ‘Profoundly Radical’ Message of Earth Day’s First Organizer

Fifty years on, Denis Hayes is still trying to keep the spirit that made Earth Day a world-changing event alive — and to refocus its energy on climate change.

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

One day in the fall of 1969, Denis Hayes, a graduate student at Harvard, snagged a 10-minute meeting with Gaylord Nelson, a United States senator from Wisconsin who had been talking up his idea for a national teach-in about environmentalism.

The visit stretched into a two-hour conversation, and at the end of it Mr. Hayes had a job. He ended up organizing the original Earth Day on April 22, 1970.

Mr. Hayes has participated in many other Earth Day events in the years since, so it should be no surprise that he is chairman emeritus of Earth Day 2020, which has shifted, in the time of coronavirus, to the digital realm. It has also come to focus on another threat to the planet, climate change, which 50 years ago “was not part of the national discussion,” Mr. Hayes said.

In recent days, Mr. Hayes has drawn a connection between the coronavirus and climate change, and the failure of the federal government to effectively deal with either one. In an essay in the Seattle Times, he wrote that “Covid-19 robbed us of Earth Day this year. So let’s make Election Day Earth Day.” He urged his readers to get involved in politics and set aside national division. “This November 3,” he wrote, “vote for the Earth.”

[foreheadtouch]

denis hayes via the new york times, coordinator of the very first earth day in 1970

[gregorygalloway]

In the winter of 1969–1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) formed a bipartisan congressional steering committee and enlisted Denis Hayes, a 25-year-old Harvard Law School dropout, to coordinate the initiative. Influenced by anti-war campus activism, Hayes sought to organize environmental teach-ins throughout the country that would occur simultaneously on 22 April 1970.

With a limited budget, Hayes and a small group of student organizers at Columbia University mailed out thousands of appeals, recruiting young volunteers to organize local events in communities and campuses across the country.

The first Earth Day celebrations took place in 2,000 colleges and universities, roughly 10,000 primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. It is estimated that 20 million people participated in the event.

Earth Day is now observed in 192 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, chaired by Denis Hayes, according to whom Earth Day is now "the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a billion people every year.”

[juspr]

I suspect that the politicians and businessmen who are jumping on the environmental bandwagon don't have the slightest idea what they are getting into. They are talking about filters on smokestacks while we are challenging corporate irresponsibility. They are bursting with pride about plans for totally inadequate municipal sewage treatment plants; we are challenging the ethics of a society that, with only 6 percent of the world's population, accounts for more than half of the world's annual consumption of raw materials. ...We will not appeal any more to the conscience of institutions because institutions have no conscience. If we want them to do what is right, we must make them do what is right.

Denis Hayes, “Earth Day--The Beginning” (1970)