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Earth Day’s Inaugural—April 22, 1970—was a watershed moment in American history. It dramatically galvanized national concern about species decline, oil spills, smog, ozone depletion, burning rivers and other environmental degradation. The brainchild of U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, Earth Day succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in raising awareness about the need to responsibly care for the planet. An estimated 20 million people—about 10 percent of the U.S. population at the time—participated in locally-organized grassroots events.
Throughout his life Nelson remained modest about his own contribution but lauded citizens: “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time not the resources to organize the 20 million demonstrators who participated from thousands of schools and local communities. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself,” Nelson wrote.
Nelson already earned a national reputation as Wisconsin’s “Conservation Governor” from 1959 to 1963. He successfully initiated reforms to clean up waterways, protect natural resources, create green jobs and expand Wisconsin’s state park system and other outdoor recreation opportunities.
After being elected a U.S. Senator in 1962, Nelson spent seven years trying unsuccessfully to get fellow lawmakers to embrace his environmental agenda. Nelson knew that citizens were increasingly concerned about such issues. Rachel Carson’s 1961 Silent Spring, which documented ravages caused by indiscriminate pesticide use, was a bestseller.
In 1969, two environmental events grabbed headlines—a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, which leaked three million gallons of oil into the Pacific Ocean, and a fire in Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caused by decades of industrial waste dumping. People were shocked by images in mass media of oil-slicked birds and dead dolphins.
After witnessing oil-spill devastation near Santa Barbara in 1969, Nelson read about popular “teach-ins” on college campuses. The format struck him as a promising way to communicate public outrage to elected officials in Washington D.C. and state governments. Nelson later wrote, “If we could tap into the [public’s] environmental concerns…and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could…force the issue onto the national political agenda.”
Soon Nelson created an independent organization and hired a four-person team to promote the national event. Denis Hughes, age 25 and a veteran anti-war organizer, pushed for the “Earth Day” name. As such it has been celebrated annually since, with as many as 192 countries staging celebrations.
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In 1990, Nelson wrote about Earth Day: “For the first time people were given the opportunity to demonstrate their deep concern about what was happening in their own communities and across the nation—polluted air, rivers, lakes and oceans; health-threatening hazardous wastes; urban blight; pesticide and herbicide poisoning of people, plants, birds and animals; the destruction of scenic beauty and wildlife habitats. All of this swirling around them and the politicians didn’t seem to know, understand or care.”
Long-Lasting Legacies
The first Earth Day is credited with launching the modern environmental movement and is recognized as the planet’s largest civic event. It was followed by what came to be known as the “Environmental Decade,” a testament to Nelson’s “singlemindedness and persistence,” according wrote biographer Bill Christofferson in The Man from Clear Lake: Earth Day Founder Senator Gaylord Nelson.
Many environmental laws were enacted in the decade after Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act, Consumer Product Safety Act and regulations of pesticides, occupational safety, hazardous materials, and clean drinking water. Nelson also championed the Wilderness Act, the National Trails Act, the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, and the National Environmental Education Act. He introduced the first federal legislation to mandate fuel-efficiency standards in automobiles, control strip mining, and ban the use of phosphates in detergents as well as use of the pesticide DDT. He supported Wisconsin citizens and scientists in “putting DDT on trial,” as reported in the Shepherd in 2018.
Throughout his career, Nelson respected and befriended colleagues with divergent political perspectives. His integrity and determination, combined with his folksy style, enhanced his success at building bipartisan support for his initiatives, according to Christofferson.
The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (or Nelson Institute) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is named after him. The Gaylord Nelson Wilderness in the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore was named to honor his efforts in getting that park created.
Holistic Thinking about All Living Things
Nelson spoke to a full auditorium of 1,700 people at Milwaukee Area Technical College on the eve of Earth Day in 1970, his fourth event that day alone, during a two-week national speaking tour. Paul G. Hayes, a retired environmental writer for the Milwaukee Journal, recalled recently that Nelson shared the stage that evening with Jane Jacobs, the renowned urbanist and best-selling author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
“It is not just an issue of survival but of how we survive.” Nelson told the MATC crowd. He outlined his inclusive environmental agenda. “You hear the word ecology. That’s a big science, not a narrow one. It’s a big concept…concerned with all the ramifications of all the relationships of all living creatures to each other and their environment. It is concerned with the total ecosystem, not just how we dispose of tin cans, bottles and our garbage…Our goal is not just an environment of clean air and water and scenic beauty. The objective is an environment of decency, quality and mutual respect for all other human beings and all other living creatures.”
Video excerpts of that speech, and other archival documents, can be accessed on the UW-hosted website Gaylord Nelson and Earth Day: The Making of the Modern Environmental Movement.
Nelson was especially concerned about the health of the Great Lakes. He wrote, “The lesson of the Great Lakes in the 1970s is this: in less than 200 years, in less time than America has been a Nation, …significant adverse changes in the Lakes’ water quality have occurred.” He placed responsibility for these changes solely on human activity. He also stressed the economic benefits of a healthy environment and “placing the Gross National Quality [of Life] at least on par with the Gross National Product.”
Although known primarily for his environmental efforts, Nelson as senator also led consumer advocacy, strongly supported civil rights and civil liberties, opposed the Vietnam War early on and advocated for small businesses.
From Devastation to Conservation
Wisconsin eventually became a leader on many environmental fronts, but only after irreplaceable natural treasures were destroyed early on.
In 1867, Milwaukee’s Increase Lapham led a three-man commission that issued a Report on the Disastrous Effects of the Destruction of Forest Trees Now Going On So Rapidly in the State of Wisconsin. “The warning did little to slow the cutover of the North Woods, which essentially was completed by the turn of the century,” said Hayes, who with Martha Bergland co-authored a book about Lapham. Hayes called that deforestation “the most profligate human-caused environmental disaster wreaked upon our state in the nineteenth century.”
Deforestation also starkly contrasts with the Menominee Tribe’s sustainable management of the Menominee Forest for more than 150 years. A premier example of forest management in the world, it supports the Tribe’s “traditional quality of life from an intact, diverse, productive, and healthy forest ecosystem on the reservation.”
Wisconsin citizens and scientists gradually formed alliances to conserve and responsibly manage precious natural resources. Nelson consistently collaborated in such efforts.
Nelson was born in 1916 in the small town of Clear Lake in northwestern Wisconsin. Christofferson wrote that Nelson developed his passion for natural areas during childhood explorations of his town’s lakes, woods and streams. His parents both engaged in Progressive politics, and he became aware early of the legacy of Robert M. “Fighting Bob” La Follette, The elder LaFollette is credited as helping to foster “The Wisconsin Idea,” the general principle that education should influence people’s lives beyond the boundaries of the classroom.
After Aldo Leopold was hired by UW as its first professor of wildlife management in 1933, he also helped create the world’s first ecological restoration project at the UW Arboretum. Leopold, who espoused a “land ethic” in his classic environmental book A Sand County Almanac, “greatly influenced Nelson’s thinking,” wrote Christofferson. Leopold co-founded The Wilderness Society in 1935.
After Nelson lost his re-election bid in 1980, along with numerous other prominent Democratic senators, Nelson was invited to chair The Wilderness Society. Christofferson wrote that this affiliation “closed the circle and proved again the ecologists’ mantra that ‘everything is related.’”
Facing Ongoing Challenges
Despite extraordinary progress in addressing environmental challenges following Earth Day, many challenges remain. Attempts to undercut environmental protections have often succeeded. Most recently, the GOP-led Wisconsin Legislature waived regulations for wetland preservation for the Chinese behemoth Foxconn’s development in Racine County. Legislators in the Republican Party, which once advocated for conservation and supported bipartisan environmental laws, now deny climate-change science in lockstep.
Reaching the venerable age of fifty, Nelson’s brainchild has aged well. Earth Day continues to focus attention on the environment through activities transcending party lines. Perhaps new realities and awareness in the COVID-19 era might make this anniversary a time of renewed appreciation for our interdependence as inhabitants of Earth.
