Earth Day and the environmental movement

The story

A river on fire

In June 1969, in Cleveland, in the United States, something incredible happened: a river caught fire. The Cuyahoga River was so polluted with industrial waste, oil and chemicals that its surface burst into flames. It was not the first time, but this time the news, told by newspapers and magazines, went all round the country. A few months earlier, off the coast of California, at Santa Barbara, an oil well had spilled tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the sea, covering the beaches and killing birds and dolphins.

In those years the air of the big American cities was full of smog, factories dumped waste into rivers, oil polluted the coasts and insecticides such as DDT poisoned birds and other animals. As early as 1962, a biologist, Rachel Carson, had described all this in a book called “Silent Spring”, which explained how a poisoned world risked becoming mute, with no more birdsong. The book caused a stir and opened many people's eyes.

A day for the Earth

A senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, had an idea: why not organise a great day of study about the environment at universities, like the ones students organised against the war? He asked a young student, Denis Hayes, to be the organiser, and together they chose a date, 22 April 1970, a day when classes had not yet ended and the weather was usually good.

The success was enormous. About twenty million Americans, around a tenth of the population at the time, took part in thousands of schools, universities, streets and parks: there were parades, speeches, clean-up days and tree planting. In New York a famous street, Fifth Avenue, was closed to cars. For the first time, people from different parties and with different ideas came together for the same purpose: saving the environment.

In many schools students collected rubbish along rivers and roads, planted trees and discussed air, water and endangered animals with their teachers. In some cities certain streets stayed closed to cars for a day, and in front of government buildings politicians from every party gave speeches. The central organisation was small: the ideas spread by themselves, thanks to newspapers, radio and word of mouth among students, and surprised the organisers themselves.

New laws

The American government was pushed to act. At the end of 1970 the EPA, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, was created, and the Clean Air Act was passed, followed by the Clean Water Act (1972) and the law to protect endangered species in 1973. The use of DDT was banned too. Many American cities began to clean up their rivers and to check factories.

In the rest of the world the movement soon spread. In 1972 the United Nations held the first great conference on the environment in Stockholm. In Italy the WWF had existed since 1966, and in 1980 Legambiente was founded. In 1990, for the twentieth anniversary, about two hundred million people in 141 countries took part in Earth Day. Today, according to the organisers, the event involves over a billion people every year, in about 190 countries. Since 2009 the United Nations has celebrated 22 April as International Mother Earth Day.

Another image helped to change the way people looked: the photograph taken on 24 December 1968 by the astronaut William Anders during the Apollo 8 mission, “Earthrise”, the Earth rising above the horizon of the Moon. For the first time, everybody could see the whole planet, small and fragile in the darkness.