Earth Day
Earth Day is an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally through earthday.org including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.
In 1969 at a UNESCO conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970, and hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the national coordinator. The name "Earth Day" was coined by advertising writer Julian Koenig. Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. Key non-environmentally focused partners played major roles. Under the leadership of labor leader Walter Reuther, for example, the United Auto Workers was the most instrumental outside financial and operational supporter of the first Earth Day. According to Hayes: "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in recognition of his work.
The first Earth Day was focused on the United States. In 1990, Denis Hayes, the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international and organized events in 141 nations. On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and 120 other countries. This signing satisfied a key requirement for the entry into force of the historic draft climate protection treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. Numerous communities engaged in "Earth Day Week actions," an entire week of activities focused on the environmental issues that the world faces. On Earth Day 2020, over 100 million people around the world observed the 50th anniversary in what is being referred to as the largest online mass mobilization in history.
1969 Santa Barbara oil spill
On January 28, 1969, a well called Platform A, drilled by Union Oil off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, blew out. More than of oil spilled, killing more than 10,000 seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions. As a reaction to this disaster, activists were mobilized to create environmental regulation, environmental education, and Earth Day. Among the proponents of Earth Day were the people in the front lines of fighting this disaster, Selma Rubin, Marc McGinnes, and Bud Bottoms, founder of Get Oil Out. Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day, said that Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin was inspired to create Earth Day upon seeing an oil slick from an airplane in the Santa Barbara Channel.Santa Barbara's Environmental Rights Day 1970
On the first anniversary of the oil blowout, January 28, 1970, Environmental Rights Day was created, and the Declaration of Environmental Rights was read. It had been written by Rod Nash during a boat trip across the Santa Barbara Channel while carrying a copy of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence. The organizers of Environmental Rights Day, led by Marc McGinnes, had been working closely over a period of several months with Congressman Pete McCloskey to consult on the creation of the National Environmental Policy Act, the first of many new environmental protection laws sparked by the national outcry about the blowout/oil spill and on the Declaration of Environmental Rights. Both McCloskey and Earth Day organizer Denis Hayes, along with Senator Alan Cranston, Paul Ehrlich, David Brower and other prominent leaders, endorsed the Declaration and spoke about it at the Environmental Rights Day conference. According to Francis Sarguis, "the conference was sort of like the baptism for the movement." According to Hayes, this was the first giant crowd he spoke to that "felt passionately, I mean really passionately, about environmental issues." Hayes also thought the conference might be the beginning of a real movement. Nash, Garrett Hardin, McGinnes and others went on to develop the first undergraduate Environmental Studies program of its kind at the University of California at Santa Barbara.Earth Day 1970
The seeds that grew into the first Earth Day were planted by many people, including Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. An ardent conservationist and former two-term governor of Wisconsin, Nelson had long sought ways to increase the potency of the environment as a political issue. The extraordinary attention garnered by Rachel Carson's 1962 book, Silent Spring, the famous 1968 Earthrise NASA photograph of the Earth from the Moon, the saturation news coverage given to the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River catching fire in early 1969 led Nelson to think the time was ripe for an environmental initiative. As a result of interactions with his staff and with Fred Dutton, a prominent Democratic operative who had been Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign manager, Nelson became convinced that environmental teach-ins on college campuses could serve as such a vehicle.Elsewhere in the US, discussions in higher education were also being held to seek ways to honor the Earth. In an oral history interview conducted May 10, 2024, Tucson, Arizona, based ethnobotanist Martha Ames Burgess recounted a 1968 meeting of University of Arizona students and professors, including Ecology & Evolutionary Biology professor Stephen M. Russell. The meeting was held at Chiricahua National Monument to envision a celebration of the earth and its processes. The meeting ended with another nascent plan for Earth Day.
Teach-ins had been held on hundreds of college campuses to debate the war in Vietnam. They generally reflected the divide between those who thought of Vietnam as a bulwark to stop additional countries falling to communism like dominos, versus those who believed that the war was the latest stage of a nationalist, anti-colonialist campaign by Vietnamese who had fought against China, then France, Japan, France again, and now the United States. These debates elevated arguments over the war in the public consciousness and enlisted a generation of student activists.
Nelson asked public interest lawyer Anthony Roisman to establish a non-profit, Environmental Teach-In, Inc., to manage the campaign, and recruited a small board of directors. He asked Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey to co-chair the board to ensure it was bipartisan and bicameral.
On September 20, 1969, Senator Nelson first announced his plans for an "environmental teach-In" in a little-publicized talk at the University of Washington. "I am convinced that the same concern the youth of this nation took in changing this nation's priorities on the war in Vietnam and on civil rights can be shown for the problem of the environment. That is why I plan to see to it that a national teach-in is held."
Senator Nelson went on to encourage teach-ins at many more speeches. A November talk at Airlie House had a New York Times reporter in the audience. The resulting front-page article was a turning point. Letters of inquiry from across the country began to pour into Nelson's Senate office. The article piqued the interest of Denis Hayes, then a graduate student at Harvard. Hayes traveled to Washington, D.C., and arranged a 10-minute visit with Senator Nelson. Hayes returned to Harvard with the charter to organize Boston. After a few days of reference checks, he was asked to drop out of Harvard to become executive director of the national campaign.
Because of the non-hierarchical tenor of the times, Hayes suggested that people be designated coordinators rather than directors. He became the national coordinator, and he quickly hired various regional coordinators, a press coordinator, a K–12 coordinator, a volunteer coordinator, etc. At its peak, the national office had a few dozen paid staff, each earning a flat $375/month, plus more than 100 regular volunteers.
As the talented regional coordinators fanned out across the country, however, they immediately encountered two problems. First, by 1970, the concept of "teach-ins" had become passé. Moreover, teach-ins generally involved debates, and no one was pro-pollution. Second, and more troubling, leading activists on college campuses were deeply involved in the anti-war and civil rights movements. They tended to view the environment as a distraction.
The "Earth Day" name
The solution to the first problem came from an unexpected direction. Shortly after the turn of the year, Julien Koenig stopped by the national offices and volunteered to help. Koenig was a Madison Avenue giant. His campaign for Volkswagen, "Think Small," was later cited by Advertising Age as the "greatest advertising campaign of the 20th century."Over coffee, Hayes confided that the "teach-in" moniker was not working and asked whether Koenig had any ideas. Koenig asked for a few days. A week later, he returned with an assortment of mock-ups for ads, laid out around the announcement of "Ecology Day," "Environment Day," "Earth Day," and "E Day." Koenig said that his personal favorite was Earth Day – in part because April 22 happened to be his birthday, and "birthday" rhymes with "Earth Day." Hayes immediately agreed. Koenig offered to prepare a fully refined ad. Hayes insisted that it include a small coupon soliciting funds for the threadbare operation. Koenig's ad was visually arresting, and perfectly summed up the issues and values, the feisty-but-welcoming tone that the campaign had adopted. Hayes loved it and decided to bet the farm. He committed about half of all the money in the campaign's bank account to buy a full page in The Sunday New York Times opinion section.
The ad was a huge success. Overnight, "Earth Day" became the almost-universally-used name for the upcoming event. The ad generated more than enough revenue to repay its cost, and thousands of potential organizers sent in their names and addresses along with their checks. In future months, magazines and alternative newspapers ran the ad for free, generating still more names and more financial support. The national office started using Environmental Action, rather than Environmental Teach-in, on its letterhead and publications to promote Earth Day.
At this point, Hayes made a far-reaching decision. In those early days, it would have been easy to obtain trademark protection for Earth Day and force compliance with a set of standards by anyone using it. Hayes decided, however, that he wanted the name to be broadly used by anyone who planned to focus on environmental issues that spring.
Although "Earth Day" swiftly replaced Environmental Teach-in, the second problem proved more complicated. College activists, for the most part, viewed anything other than ending the war as a distraction. A majority of the Earth Day staff had cut their teeth as organizers against the war and saw no conflict. The war appeared to be winding down, and they felt it was prudent to start paying attention to the far more profound changes needed to produce a healthy, sustainable America. But time was short, and college activists were not responding.
Hayes spent a day reviewing the letters Senator Nelson had received and discovered that very few were from college students. Most were from women who appeared to be college-educated homemakers who wanted to do something to improve the world for their children. Another large share was from K–12 teachers.
Hayes decided to shift the campaign's focus from colleges and universities to community organizing. Building off the successful strategies of the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement, he decided to promote large urban rallies, focused on major environmental issues, while also encouraging environmental education at the K–12 level.
Bryce Hamilton, who had been Midwest coordinator, was shifted to K–12 coordinator, and it proved to be a great choice. Hamilton reached out to the National Education Association, American Federation of Teachers, and the National Science Teachers Association to enlist their members; he provided materials to thousands of educators who wrote to the group directly; and he distributed the most creative ideas he received from anyone to everyone else. In April, more than 10,000 primary and secondary schools engaged in Earth Day activities, mostly education and service actions like beach clean-ups, tree planting, and recycling.
Walt Kelly created an anti-pollution poster featuring his comic strip character Pogo with the quotation "We have met the enemy and he is us" to promote the 1970 Earth Day. Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action to change human behavior and provoke policy changes.
On the first Earth Day an estimated 20 million Americans took part in rallies, marches, and teach-ins calling for environmental reform. Earth Day is now observed in 192 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earthday.org. According to Denis Hayes, the first Earth Day 1970 organizer and current Board Chair Emeritus of Earthday.org, Earth Day is now "the largest secular day of protest in the world, and more than a billion people participate in Earth Day actions every year."
By far the largest source of funding for the first Earth Day was organized labor. Walter Reuther had led the United Auto Workers since 1946, and he was a progressive supporter of civil rights, opposed the war, and championed the environment. He was a founding member of the Coalition for Clean Air, which successfully lobbied for the Clean Air Act of 1970. Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, made the first donation to support the first Earth Day in the amount of $2,000. Under his leadership, the UAW also funded telephone capabilities so that the organizers could communicate and coordinate with each other from all across the United States. The UAW also financed, printed, and mailed all of the literature and other materials for the first Earth Day and mobilized its members to participate in the public demonstrations across the country. According to Denis Hayes, "The UAW was by far the largest contributor to the first Earth Day" and "Without the UAW, the first Earth Day would have likely flopped!" Hayes further said, "Walter's presence at our first press conference utterly changed the dynamics of the coverage—we had instant credibility."
At a meeting of the Environmental Teach-In board of directors, the finance committee chair arrived with a check for $20,000 from Standard Oil of New Jersey. That would have provided an effective measure of financial relief for the financially strapped group. But Hayes declined the check, convincing the board that it would destroy the credibility of the nascent organization. He said that he would be delighted to accept money from clean sources, but no other corporate money was ever raised for the national organization.
Individual donations were a significant source of funding, generally accompanied by a contribution slip from the Earth Day Ad providing the donor's name and address. Larry Rockefeller persuaded Robert Rauschenberg to create and donate a batch of Earth Day lithographs, but the Earth Day staff lacked contacts in the art world who were able to sell them for their $2,000 market value, so they were provided to donors for much less.
The sale of standard posters and especially pins brought in additional revenue. The staff refused to sell bumper strips because they would be attached to cars.