Earth Day Facts

The idea for an Earth Day came to U. S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin on a speaking tour in California in the summer of 1969. He modeled it after the Vietnam teach-ins being held on college campuses.

To channel the growing energy he saw into political change, and to “reach across and unify all segments of the population,” he formed the non-profit “Environmental Teach-In, Inc.”  From there, Nelson said, the event “organized itself.”

1. On the eve of the first Earth Day, Nelson spoke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison: “Our goal is not to forget about the worst environments in America—in the ghettos, in Appalachia and elsewhere. Our goal is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all human beings and all other living creatures—an environment without ugliness, without ghettoes, without poverty, without discrimination, without hunger and without war. Our goal is a decent environment in its deepest and broadest sense”
2. The first Earth Day was held 22 April 1970, with an estimated 20 million Americans, 10% of the population, taking part. That number included 10 million public school children from 10,000 grade and high schools, and students from 2,000 colleges . A four-page information packet was aimed at national action, planned and organized locally.
3. In Denver, Gaylord Nelson spoke eloquently of a hopeful new beginning—“the birth date of a new American ethic that rejects the frontier philosophy that the continent was put here for our plunder,”  accepting that “even urbanized, affluent, mobile societies are interdependent with the fragile, life-sustaining systems of the air, the water, the land” 
4. The overwhelming success of the first Earth Day, and its repetition each year since 1970, led to a decade of significant environmental legislation, including the Clean Air Act, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Superfund to clean up toxic waste sites—28 major pieces of legislation and hundreds of other “public lands bills.”
5. It was a start on Senator Nelson’s ambitious plans for a new ethic, a new set of values “where bigger is not necessarily better—where slower can be faster—and where less can be more” and where the country would “put gross national quality above gross national product.”

Earth Day in 2010 is no longer just American—it is global, recognized in 175 countries, with many them having expanded it to “Earth Week.”  It is a spring event in the Northern Hemisphere, an autumn one in the Southern. And the United Nations celebrates World Environment Day each year in a different country. Throughout it remains centered on self-generating communities, large and small, seeking information and inspiration, looking to act and generate more action.

Gaylord Nelson, 1916-2005

1. Born in northwest Wisconsin in the village of Clear Lake, pop. 689, 4 June 1916. His father was a medical doctor and delivered the son soon nicknamed “Happy.”

2. Nelson described his upbringing as “idyllic”—with experience in individual responsibility and morality and civility.

3. U. S. Military in WWII, met future wife, nurse Carrie Lee Dotson: both were Lieutenants.

4. After serving in the Wisconsin State Senate, elected Governor at age 42, Inauguration 5 January 1959.

5. Especially in his second term, became known as “The Conservation Governor,” especially for expanding and preserving public recreational lands under the Outdoor Recreation Act Program, or ORAP.

6. Sworn in as United States junior Senator from Wisconsin, to William Proxmire’s senior, on 8 January 1963. Immediately articulates conservation as the prime issue facing the country.

7. Enlisted President John F. Kennedy to do a “Conservation Tour,” including the Apostle Islands in Lake Superior. The President thought it a success; Nelson considered it a failed attempt to dominate the news and wake the national conscience to conservation issues.

8. By his third term in the Senate, Nelson, an engaging, often humorous speaker, was deemed the most popular and best-liked senator in the Congress.

9. Worked to preserve the Appalachian Trail and establish the North Country Trail and Ice Age Trail; also dealt with detergents and water pollution, with poverty and unemployment by creating Operation Main Stream and Teacher Corps.

10. Throughout considered his primary legacies in Wisconsin to be the preservation of the Apostle Islands and the Upper St. Croix River

11. Following the highly successful first Earth Day (qv) in 1970, worked on various consumer issues, from “Unsafe at any Speed” autos to the safety of the birth control pill. Succeeded in getting the pesticide DDT banned.

12. Nelson lost his Senate seat in the Reagan landslide of 1980, became President of the Wilderness Society.

13. Gaylord Anton Nelson died  of cardio vascular failure 3 July 2005, age 89. He is buried in the Clear Lake Cemetery.

 
References

Websites:

Gaylord Nelson and Earth Day: the Making of an Environmental Movement
www.nelsonearthday.net/
 
Wilderness Society
www.wilderness.org/content/gaylord-nelson

Wisconsin Historical Society
www.wisconsinhistory.org

Further links, books and print material:

Bill Christofferson, The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator Gaylord Nelson (2004)
 
Thomas R. Huffman, Protectors of the Land and Water: Environmentalism in Wisconsin, 1961-1968 (1994)
 
Eileen M. McMahon and Theodore J. Karamanski, Northwoods River in Upper Midwest History (2009)
 
Gaylord Nelson, Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise (2002) With Susan Campbell and Paul Wozniak & a Foreword by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

For more information about these titles and other related documents, see
www.nelsonearthday.net/collection/resources.htm.

 For more information about Gaylord Nelson’s environmental legacy and Earth Day see St. Croix Conservation Study Center-CONSERVATION.

Funding provided in part by
the Wisconsin Humanities Council.