On Earth Day's 40th anniversary, a different world
Denis Hayes, coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970, discusses the challenges for the environmental movement and prospects for global warming legislation in today's changed political climate.
Jim Tankersley
Los Angeles Times
04/21/2010
Reporting from Washington — When millions of environmental activists gathered on college campuses and in major cities 40 years ago for the first Earth Day, the rallies, teach-ins and organizing helped galvanize action on a historic scale — including passage of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts and creation of the Environmental Protection Agency.
But even the most optimistic organizers of Thursday's anniversary celebrations in Los Angeles, Chicago and other major cities — and the major rally scheduled in Washington on Sunday — might concede that there's little immediate prospect of matching such watershed achievements.
The political climate has changed, with a battered economy making it harder to build support for policies that could raise prices, cost jobs or slow growth. Today's issues — global warming, ocean pollution, carbon-based energy systems — are more abstruse and remote. And environmentalists' opponents are far better organized than in the past.
In 1970, says Denis Hayes, who left graduate school to coordinate the first Earth Day and who is now engaged in planning the event's 40th anniversary celebration, many business leaders and others who squared off against environmentalists "were caught a little off guard."
Now, with the focus shifting to global warming, the opposing sides are so evenly matched that it's unclear whether climate legislation has a realistic chance of passing Congress, even with President Obama's support.
This week, Hayes answered questions about the Earth Day movement over the last four decades, as well as what he hopes will be its legacy: action on climate change, which he calls "the most important issue facing humanity."
Q: What's different about Earth Day and the environmental movement today versus 40 years ago?
A: In 1970, the stuff we were mobilizing people around was obvious. You could see it, smell it, taste it.... The big issues that remain now are things that are largely impossible to detect unless you have sophisticated instruments. They're things like climate change and ocean acidification — big issues, but not something you can see affecting your children.
