190 The Story of Earth Day + This Week in US History

This week at In The Past Lane, the American History podcast, we take a look at the origins of Earth Day 50 years ago this week, and the two high profile environmental disasters in 1969 that helped to inspire it, the Santa Barbara, CA oil spill and the an oil fire on the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH. Environmental activists took advantage of the media coverage of the events to form organizations like Greenpeace and start an annual conscience raising event called Earth Day. In the years that followed, the US enacted landmark environmental legislation ranging from the Clean Air Act to the Endangered Species Act. But contemporary efforts to roll back these regulations imperil the environment and public health.  

Feature Story: The Birth of Earth Day - 50th anniversary

On April 22, 1970 – 50 years ago this week – 20 million Americans gathered in places all across the nation to commemorate the first Earth Day. This event was inspired by two high profile environmental disasters that took place the year before in 1969.

But before we dive into those stories, let’s first step back to do a quick, History of Environmentalism 101. While there were earlier environmentalist moments in US history, what we would recognize as environmentalism began to emerge in the late 19th century. And as it did, it represented the beginnings of a major shift in how Americans viewed private property rights.

So, what do I mean by that? Well, from the colonial period through to the late 19th century, most Americans shared the belief that private property rights were almost sacred. A person could do anything they wanted with their property and no government should have any say in the matter. And that was fine so long as the nation remained rural and its economy based in agriculture.

But it didn’t. A little thing called the Industrial Revolution happened and that raised all sorts of questions about property rights. Some Americans began to develop a critique of the absolute sanctity of private property rights. And they did so in response to mounting evidence that unfettered private property rights in a modern industrial capitalist setting had seriously negative consequences for society. They noted, for example, that complete and total freedom from regulation left property owners free to engage in strip mining of mountain ranges for coal, or clearcutting forests for lumber, or hunting various animals into extinction. Unrestrained private property rights also left them free to dump their toxic waste into the waterways that ran through their private property or into the air that hovered above their private property—even when this meant the waste would ultimately end up on someone else’s private property. 

These critics were not anti-capitalist radicals. Rather, to make their case, they invoked a key republican ideal: the common good. They argued that societies and governments needed to protect other things besides individual private property rights. They noted the uncomfortable fact that one person’s freedom to use their private property any way they wanted could easily threaten another person’s freedom to live free of poisons.  Or, put another way, they noted that individualism and the common good often came into conflict. And so they developed a philosophy that emphasized what has become a key idea in environmentalism – the idea of connectivity, that people are connected to each other and to the larger ecosystem. That one person’s actions, therefore, have consequences for others, and this fact needs to be taken into account as societies develop their laws and public policy regarding the economy and environment.

The first attempts to protect the environment mainly took the form of conservation—essentially saving the wilderness from economic development.  People like Theodore Roosevelt believed it was essential to preserve large tracts of wilderness to allow future generations of Americans to enjoy it by hiking, camping, and hunting. Few people in the late-19th and early 20th century raised concerns over water pollution, air pollution, or endangered species. 

By the mid-20th century a few concerns over the environment emerged—things like smog and roadside trash—but these were rare. The first significant change in public attitudes concerning the environment, the shift from merely supporting the idea of conserving nature in wildlife reserves and national parks, came in 1962 when Rachel Carson published her book, Silent Spring that revealed the devastating environmental effects of the widely used pesticide DDT, especially on birds.

Carson’s book became a bestseller and it led to the introduction of more than 40 bills to control pesticide use in state legislatures across the country. Another impact of Silent Spring was that it inspired many Americans to become environmentalists or to use the term more