Environmental Hero: Diane Wilson

Diane Wilson was a Texas shrimper—a fourth generation Texas shrimper. She had started working on her family’s boat at age eight. By the time she was twenty-four, she was a captain.

Then she read a newspaper report saying that her county was the most polluted in the United States. She confronted four chemical plants to stop them from dumping toxins into the bay.

You can find out more about Diane Wilson in Nobody Particular: One Woman’s Fight to Save the Bays, written and illustrated by Molly Bang.

You can also visit this PBS website

Earth Day's Legacy

Earth Day made the environment a voting issue.

Despite heavy lobbying by industry, months after the first Earth Day, a strong new version of the Clean Air Act passed the Senate unanimously and the House by a voice vote.

President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency by executive order.

Congress enacted the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. More environmental legislation was passed in the decade that followed
than at any other time in U.S. history.

Now Earth Day is celebrated around the world, reminding us that we need to care for the earth that sustains us. Our future depends upon it.

In the words of Gaylord Nelson, "Are we able to meet the challenge? Yes. Are we willing? that is the unanswered question."

Find out how you can do your part at the Earth Day Network. 

The First Earth Day

They filled Central Park and spilled into the streets of New York City. Old people and babies, blacks and

whites, people in suits and hippies. They raised banners, acted out skits, and swept the streets clean.

In Miami, Florida, they held a "Dead Orange Parade" where the winning float sported a statue of the Statue of Liberty wearing a gas mask.

In Omaha, Nebraska, they collected 156,000 cans and built a tin mountain.

In Albuquerque, New Mexico they played mariachi music and marched to protest the stench of a sewage treatment plant.

Over 20,000,000 people took part in the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, a tenth of the population of the United States. It was the largest demonstration in U.S. history.

“Earth Day 1970,” CBS News with Walter Cronkite,

Earth Day's 44th Anniversary

Denis Hayes was a college student when Senator Gaylord Nelson invited him to organize the first Earth Day.

 

There was no email, twitter, or cell phones. So Hayes used newspaper ads, mailings, and fliers. He reached out to professors and students, hunters and housewives, cub scouts and kindergarteners. 

He began with this ad in the New York Times:

A disease has infected our country. It has brought smog to Yosemite, dumped garbage in the Hudson, sprayed DDT in our food, and left our cities in decay. Its carrier is man.

Earth Day is a commitment to make life better, not just bigger and faster; to provide real rather than rhetorical solutions. It is a day to re-examine the ethic of individual progress at mankind’s expense. It is a day to challenge the corporate and governmental leaders who promise change, but who shortchange the necessary programs. It is a day for looking beyond tomorrow. April 22 seeks a future worth living. April 22 seeks a future.

The result was the largest demonstration in U.S. history. Check out these images from National Geographic.

Happy Earth Day!

Senator Gaylord Nelson and the First Earth Day

The Vietnam War, desegregation, nuclear disarmament—there were so many issues demanding attention in 1969. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin was dismayed by the degradation of the environment, but how could he convince his fellow legislators to act to save it?

After a major oil spill in Santa Barbara, California, he was invited to speak at a conference in Berkley. While flying in, he read an article about college teach-ins protesting the war in Vietnam. Nelson said, “It popped into my head. That’s it! Why not have an environmental teach-in and get everyone involved?”

That idea was the seed of the first Earth Day.

Here’s Senator Nelson speaking at a rally in Milwaukee on the first Earth Day.

http://nelsonearthday.net/video/vha593_nelsonearthday.htm

Killer Smog

In When Rivers Burned: The Earth Day Story, I talk about the 1948 smog in Donora, PA, which killed twenty people there.

But the United States wasn’t the only country with smog problems. The deadliest smog in recorded history was a “killer fog” that struck London in December 1952. 

It was so thick that people couldn’t see their feet. Thousands of people were hospitalized, lips blue, struggling for breath. At least 4,000 people died. The death toll could actually be many times higher. 

This incident led to Britain’s Clean Air Act.

Find out more at the History Channel website:

http://www.history.com/news/the-killer-fog-that-blanketed-london-60-years-ago

Cuyahoga River or Dump?

Need to move oil from one tank to another? Just dig a trench and let it flow downhill. So what if it soaks into the soil and washes into the river.

Need to get rid of the waste from your paint or chemical factory? Just dump it in the river!

Throw in guts from the slaughterhouse, garbage, and sewage overflow. It’s all perfectly legal—or at least it was in 1969, before the first Earth Day.

That noxious stew made great fuel for the fire on the Cuyahoga River, a fire which would help spark an environmental movement.

Check out this video: The Cuyahoga River Fire: "Don't Fall in the River" put out by the Center for Public History and Digital Humanities