Earthlings
It's the 35th anniversary of Earth Day
Date published: 4/22/2005
Anyone reading this that doesn't cover?
GREEN COMES in many shades, some loud and lurid. Thus, environmental radicals have, like other true believers, inspired the nation's abundant wiseacres. You've seen the bumper stickers. "Nuke the whales." "Earth First! (We'll pave the other planets later.)" "There's a place for all of God's creatures--right beside the mashed potatoes."
But the environmental movement that 35 years ago today staged the first Earth Day--its neo-Druid wing and all--has been a profoundly beneficial force in creating a widely held dialectic of respect for the natural world. This arrived not a moment too soon.
Emerging from the want of the Great Depression and the sacrifices of World War II into an unprecedented era of prosperity, Americans naturally overdid. Consumption became a way of life, as middle-income families suddenly found themselves within economic reach of luxuries theretofore available only to the wealthy. Mr. and Mrs. America strode into the future high, wide, and handsome, expecting life to get only better.
But this orgy of acquisition, with industrial output in the middle of the pile, came with heavy tolls, especially on the environment. As Donna Pienkowski of the Battlefield Sierra Group wrote in these pages yesterday, "Lake Erie was nearly 'dead,' rivers in several states spontaneously combusted due to a toxic mix of chemicals in their waters, and song birds were rapidly declining. Even our national symbol, the bald eagle, was threatened with extinction."
Starting with the administration of Richard Nixon, the federal government stepped in with big shoes to regulate pollution that befouled America's air, water, and soil, not to mention industrial practices that threatened plants and animals. (The Environmental Protection Agency's own 35th birthday is this December.) Republican and Democratic statehouses followed suit. The results are a palpable improvement in the state of America's share of the physical world.
Date published: 4/22/2005
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