We asked one of the original Earth Day organizers for ideas on how to bring back urgency to the movement during a moment that’s more dire than ever
The first Earth Day was held in 1970.
“At the time, rivers were on fire and birds were dying off en masse due to air and water pollution. Other big issues were at play, too: Vietnam was tearing people apart, and events like the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy and the Stonewall Riot had inflamed cultural divides and kept the public on edge. Despite that, 10 percent of the U.S. population took to the streets and protested the destruction of the environment on that first Earth Day.
[...] Change wasn’t immediate [...] But in the following months, [Denis Hayes] and other activists founded the Earth Day Network, targeted specific politicians and policies, and spearheaded a wide-ranging letter-writing campaign. Within the next few years, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and established the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a host of other protective measures.”
All change, particularly large-scale societal and political change, seems impossible until somebody does it. But it has happened before, and it can (and will) happen again.
