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April 22, 2023
Earth Day 2023, Edition No. 53
Today is Earth Day, No. 53. The first was on April 22, 1970. It was started by the late U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wis.), and organized and led by Denis Hayes, National Coordinator for the 1970 Earth Day, and since then a mainstay leader, thinker and writer in the environmentalism movement.
Senator Nelson was a lawyer, outdoorsman, true Wisconsin character, ex-governor and hardworking legislator. To get an idea of him, see my 2005 remembrance of "The Earth Day Senator", which appeared in Environmental Protection Magazine after his death in July of 2005. In Nelson's very first speech as a senator--in March of 1963--he had argued that reductions in America's air and water quality to be a pressing national issue. .
"We need a comprehensive and nationwide program to save the natural resources of America," he continued. "Our most priceless natural resources are being destroyed."
Step right up, folks. This was new and different 1960s-era stuff. Conservation and protection of natural a resources--once the province of civics classes, the scouting movements, and a few scattered organizations like the Sierra Club--was about to become national, emotional and political.
Six years later, Nelson tapped Hayes to launch the first Earth Day. Denis Hayes has been student body president at Stanford University, and an activist against the war in Viet Nam. After Stanford, Hayes was attending Harvard's Kennedy School of Government when Nelson in 1970 hired him to spearhead the first Earth Day.
Hayes himself became a leader, solar power advocate, author and main driver in the then-new environmental movement. See this past post on his widely-discussed new book (with his wife Gail Boyer Hayes) "Cowed: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America's Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment."
Earth Day is now observed in 193 countries.
Nelson
Hayes
Posted by JD Hull at April 22, 2023 07:59 AM
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