HAPPY EARTH DAY!

by Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day

What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.

Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.

After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?

I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.

At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes, and air - and they did so with spectacular exuberance. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.

Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:

"Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."

It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.

Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.

President Obama is giving top billing to clean energy and green jobs as he promotes his $3.6 trillion budget plan.

Addressing a group of clean-tech entrepreneurs and researchers on Monday, the president noted that his proposed budget includes $150 billion over 10 years for direct investments in clean energy and efficiency, as well as $75 billion to make permanent a tax credit for research and experimentation. "At this moment of necessity we need you, we need inventiveness," he told the crowd.

"We can remain the world's leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy," Obama continued. "We can allow climate change to wreck unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs preventing its worst effects. We can hand over the jobs of the 21st century to our competitors, or we can create those jobs right here in America." The event was the first in a series of budget pep talks the president plans to give this week.

Read complete story here.

The move has drawn ire from Washington because it would mean that hundreds of thousands of acres would be off-limits for use in solar and wind power projects, which are at the core of the President's energy mission, and also important strides forward for the state, the LA Times is reporting. Feinstein's move is being seen by some Republicans as a mixed signal from the Dems about the party and the state's focus on renewable energy, and energy experts are also concerned this will be typical of the pace of progress on moving towards a green economy.

Read the complete story here. 

Stimulus 'Green Jobs' Money Flowing

Gov. Ed Rendell, D, yesterday signed two letters allowing Pennsylvania to access roughly $366 million from the federal “economic stimulus” for “green-collar” job creation.

After a tour of the Accu-Weld Replacement Window and Door Company, Mr. Rendell signed a certification letter to U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and another letter to the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PUC). The documents included a promise to reduce energy consumption across the state.

Accu-Weld is one company whose production meets the energy efficiency standards outlined in the stimulus act and has, therefore, seen demand for its products increase. Mr. Rendell said five additional companies considered environmentally friendly by the state are already receiving a total of $3.7 million in grants from the stimulus, officially known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Read complete story here.