Fifty-four years ago today, the first Earth Day burst onto the scene. The year was 1970. Lakes and rivers were polluted. The air was toxic in urban and industrial areas. Even the bald eagle, the country’s symbol, was threatened.
Gaylord Nelson, then a Wisconsin U.S. senator harnessed mounting public concern to spearhead that first Earth Day.
Alice Thompson was in 9th grade when she found out Earth Day was on the horizon. She’d later study and practice wetland ecology in Wisconsin, but in 1970, Thompson’s passion for the environment was ignited.
She recruited classmates. “I organized a few kids. We did some highway cleanups,” Thompson says.
She hand-stitched her own green and white striped Earth Day flag. Thompson still has it. “Somehow, I knew about this ecology flag and sewed this flag that we took to some Earth Day events,” she says.
Thompson wrote a passionate plea for the bald eagle at the time on the brink of extinction. “This single-spaced page that I handed out that we should ban DDT because our national symbol could not reproduce because their eggshells were so thin,” Thompson says.
Lyle Updike was at UW-Stevens Point studying wildlife biology at the time, when he spotted an article by Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson.
“In Ramparts magazine that was published in October of ’69 calling for a national teach-in on environmental issues — Earth Day,” he says.
Updike made 50 copies of the article, took a hiatus from his studies, and started recruiting. “We put together an ad hoc committee of about 15 people and started doing events every month, once a month, to get people more intuned,” Updike says.
The activists filled the university’s gym for two days of Earth Day programs. They also convinced the city government to launch a groundbreaking recycling initiative.
While Updike’s team was “crushing it” in Stevens Point, Michigan-native Barbara Alexander was busy in Washington D.C. “The college groups and the citywide organizations of Earth Day activities was carefully coordinated and promoted by our office,” Alexandar says.
Alexander was one of six young people — she the only woman — enlisted by Gaylord Nelson in the months leading up to Earth Day.
“We had the phone numbers of all these activists on little notecards. We rode the wave of the idea of Earth Day, which took off like wildfire,” Alexander says.
That wave resulted in policy. “The Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. And we had Sen. Ed Muskie, who was the head of the Senate committee, writing both those laws,” she says.
Alexander says those little notecards came in handy. “Because we had all those telephone numbers, and believe me, they lobbied like crazy and had a significant impact on the political process at the time,” Alexander says.
The groundswell also led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the career path of one Wisconsin fellow.
David Ullrich grew up in Wausau. In 1973, two days after earning his law degree, he landed a job at EPA’s Chicago office.
Ullrich says his desk was piled high with permit applications. “All my first cases were primarily the Wisconsin River and the Fox River, primarily pulp and paper,” Ullrich says.
The Clean Water Act put strict limits on what industry could discharge into “navigable waters.” Those included rivers. “And the law was beautifully conceived and implemented. And generally required an 80% to 95% reduction in conventional pollutants,” he says.
Ullrich’s assessment — the environmental laws enacted in the 1970s are “still basically sound.”
Despite those successes, climate change and other threats are stretching the natural world to its limits. What might Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson say if he were alive?
For clues, here’s his call to action on the first Earth Day:
“In a representative democracy, you’ve got all the tools. Every candidate for the city council, the county board, the legislature, the Congress, the President must be asked where he stands and what’s his commitment to environmental issue. Then you elect to office those who stand with you, and you throw out of office those who don’t. It’s as simple as that. You have the power if you use it,” Nelson said.
Gaylord Nelson's audio is courtesy of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
