{"id":1655,"date":"2021-04-22T07:59:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-22T06:59:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/?p=1655"},"modified":"2021-04-22T07:59:46","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T06:59:46","slug":"earth-day-us-history-and-committing-to-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/2021\/04\/22\/earth-day-us-history-and-committing-to-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"Earth Day, US history and committing to activism"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr John Wills
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s now over fifty years since the very first Earth Day.\u00a0 Back in April 1970, around 20 million Americans gathered across mostly university and college campuses to highlight environmental crisis. The work of Democrat Senator Gaylord Nelson and student activist Denis Hayes, the first event proved a mixture of Civil Rights-inspired teach-ins and protests.\u00a0 It hoped to galvanize sixties activism toward new ends.<\/p>\n

Very much a US-based event, the first Earth Day reflected specific American senses of society, hope and crisis.\u00a0 Alongside the turmoil of the Vietnam War and the fight for justice and civil rights, there was new recognition of an imperiled nation in the form of environmental collapse.\u00a0 Widely-read books by Rachel Carson and Paul Ehrlich foretold of a nation poisoned by pesticides and overwhelmed by overpopulation.\u00a0 Meanwhile, NASA space missions, most famously Apollo 8, revealed striking images of Planet Earth: small, beautiful, holistic but also vulnerable.<\/p>\n

The first Earth Day was also inspired by disaster. \u00a0In January 1969, a gigantic oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, became America\u2019s first modern \u2018environmental disaster.\u2019 \u00a0Reporters, protesters and public alike treated the spill as an \u2018ecological\u2019 accident. The spill provided an outlet for concerns and worries that had been brewing for years over the US environment.\u00a0 The psychological linkage between the oil spill and broader environmental issues proved significant. A pattern of neural pathways bonded around images of eco-decay, with powerful images of dead birds and ruined beaches colliding with NASA\u2019s \u2018small planet\u2019 photographs and state-based smog problems.\u00a0 The Santa Barbara oil spill became \u2018proof\u2019 that something was fundamentally wrong.<\/p>\n

The group that organized protest over the spill, Get Oil Out! (with the brilliant acronym GOO!) engaged in everything from lobbying government to street theatre.\u00a0 One of the most prescient things to come out of GOO! was a Declaration of Environmental Rights<\/em>, written by one of the nation\u2019s first environmental historians, activist Roderick Nash.<\/p>\n

Fifty years on, and the scale of crisis seems both similar but more immense than that 1970 moment. A year of Covid has dominated our mental spaces, but it is worth remembering how part of our own survival through this difficult period has come through connecting or re-connecting with the great outdoors – with nature.\u00a0 On this year\u2019s Earth Day, it\u2019s a moment to celebrate that strengthened connection, and even create your own personal \u2018declaration\u2019 of intention. It might take the form of big gestures, of environmental activism, especially backing environmental justice campaigns,\u00a0 or personal commitments, such as taking up the the vegan path or animal justice.\u00a0 Whatever it is, remember April 22.<\/p>\n

Read more: Conservation Fallout: Nuclear Protest at Diablo Canyon <\/em>(2006), US Environmental History: Inviting Doomsday <\/em>(2012)<\/p>\n

Image Credit: New York City Department of Records and Information Services<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr John Wills It\u2019s now over fifty years since the very first Earth Day.\u00a0 Back in April 1970, around 20 million Americans gathered across … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40592,"featured_media":1656,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16742,124],"tags":[245939,227482],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40592"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1655"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1661,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1655\/revisions\/1661"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/history\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}