Earth Day the First – launched in April 1970 with 1500 events mostly on college campuses by enormous student energy – led the television network news and made the covers of the national news magazines.
Earth Day the Thirty Seventh – in April 2007 – was broader based than the First Day but in many ways more debased by corporate greenwashing, and political posturing marinated in corporate campaign cash.
A comparison of the two periods, both characterized by a surge in ecological recognitions of perils and possibilities, is instructive.
In 1970, the environmental arousal focused on pesticides, air and water pollution, with attention to workplace toxics contributing to occupational diseases. Widely publicized were the inversions in the Los Angeles area, chocking with vehicles, and the Cuyahoga River near Cleveland where seeping petroleum slicks were sometimes set on fire – on the river!
The action goals were legislative authority directing the federal executive agencies to regulate and reduce permissible pollution. Compared with today, legislation passed through Congress at a torrid pace. Objecting corporate lobbyists were swept aside.
Among the bills enacted into law were the water pollution and air pollution statutes, the drinking water safety act, the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
So prevalent and visible were millions of Americans calling for action that Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald Ford signed them into law with strong statements of support for their promised purposes. He rode the wave rolling across the country to Washington, D.C.
Some results were measurable. The ouster of lead in gasoline and paint reduced the level of lead in peoples’ bodies. Levels of vinyl chloride in the bodies of industrial workers disappeared. Asbestos was close to being banned for most commercial purposes. The first mandatory fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles were issued in 1975 to be met by 1985 at the average fleet mark of 27.5 miles per gallon.
Then came the corporate counterattack replete with money, muscle and daily propaganda. Regulation was blamed for everything save spots on the sun. Deregulation became the mantra that rewarded more and more elected politicians who performed the requisite courtesies and bows. By 1980 the Democrats had joined the race for business campaign cash with the Republicans. The Reagan era began, led by an ex-actor who said that most air pollution came from trees.
Corporate apologists started writing reams of materials about public-private partnerships and marketplace trading of pollution credits. They compromised government’s arms length responsibilities with joint ventures where taxpayer monies were used by Washington, D.C. to subsidize collusive auto industry research, for example, under the Clinton Administration. These projects went nowhere, wasting billions of dollars and shielding in the process auto company exposure to regulation and to the antitrust laws.
The massive environmental stall had begun. Less technology-forcing regulation, less enforcement and less overdue lawmaking to provide ethical-legal frameworks for new risks coming from genetic engineering, nano-technology and the relentless use of many invasive new chemicals in the human environment.
Today, there are reports of many more global Earth Day events, including the global warming networking of Al Gore. Awareness of both the sustaining role of oceans, rivers, air quality, forests, prairies and the enormous costs of their damage or displacement is understood by many more people then in 1970. Consider the remarkable roll-back of the tobacco industry’s deliberate addiction of their customers at an early age.
Companies are rushing to give themselves a clearer environmental image with chain stores taking on more organic food and spreading their environmental labeling of products. More so-called green buildings are under construction. Companies like General Electric are talking a good game, but they are working to bring back nuclear power with all its costs, risks and taxpayer subsidies.
So for all the greenwashing, the auto industries are still on Congress blocking improved fuel efficiencies for motor vehicles which presently are the lowest since 1980. Electric generating plants – often burning coal – have not significantly changed their gross design inefficiencies of bygone years.
The coal barons are still blowing off the mountaintops and widening the land areas they are strip-mining. Asthma rates among children are climbing. Land erosion continues unabated.
One can gauge the lack of progress three ways.
Is the country moving expeditiously to make existing “best practices” the overall practice throughout the economy?
Are we applying the insight of Professor Barry Commoner that prevention is better than tepid often evaded controls of specific, harmful pollutants, as we did when we took the lead out of paint and gasoline?
Do we have a massive conversion agenda, led by leading politicians for solar energy in all its efficient forms, including wind power, and for the dramatic improvements in energy efficiency now readily available for application?
For the most part, the answer to these questions is NO!
© 2007 Ralph Nader
The fossil fuel era is over- even Bush’s speech writers know we’re all petroljunkies in the USA. We have a very small time window to slay the dragon of oil racketering. We need to wrestle the control of research development and implementing of solar wind and biomass away from the corporate boys and insist that the effort be publically funded and accountable as a national security issue.
There’s still plenty of room to make a buck and it will provide for massive new job creation-but there is very little insentive under current conditions of unfettered profiteering and price gouging.
Sure EARTH DAY has all of these heady issues and a history of coorporate greenwashing but more importantly environmental actions, peace marches and the like are for like minded people to get together. Many of us have common values but we’re lonely and disempowered by the media. It is time to go out there and get together. It is simple. Happy people can make great strides forward. Don’t drag us down Ralph. You’re too well respected. People love you. Accept it and empower us with keen awareness and your humility.
adamwestfakey@yahoo.ca
I belive Ralph is refering to Dr. Barry Commoner’s Making Peace with the Planet, Pantheon, 1990 out in paperback 1992. It’s an incredibly preceptive precognition of the inconvient truths we are facing today. His data led him to determine that as a species we are killing our planet and killing ourselves and lays out a plan that could stop the disaster if it is implemented- It was cutting edge for that period and alas it still is for today. He adresses heavy industrial impact on a global scale-alternative energy-and effiency modeling to retrofit the entire planet. His financial guesstimates as to what it would take to acomplish this are a fraction of what the corpratocracy is spending and is planning to spend of the people’s money and future on usless weapons systems rackets and ee never ending war schemes for control of world energy resources- and reviving that nuclear industry farce. You should be able to get ahold of a copy through your local library for free. We understand we’ve had the answers all along we just need the collective will to do it.
I know this will sound lame, but shouldn’t every day be Earth Day? Why should only one day be designated to save our planet? The people of the world need to be constantly reminded of what’s happening to Earth and how we can at least prevent more damage and perhaps get a few more years out of this big old ball of rock, mud, and water.
This Earth Day, join the Green Party.
As usual Ralph Nader is entirely correct. After a series of defeats in the 70’s the corporatists discovered that that the left could be divided and destroyed by funding futile fringe groups.
Thus the end of environmental and labor progress and the advance of the culture wars. While we spent the last 15 years argueing gay marraige the right destroyed environmental laws, labor laws and our job base.
The Earth may lose the majority of species but it’s done this bit before. As long as individuals judge thier right to wealth greater than the rights any other human being to survival the human race is at risk.
This April the US used more gas and emitted more CO2 than April 2006. The BBC today talked about an EXPANSION of the number of cars in the world. Australia is shutting down the majority of its farmland due to drought while expanding it’s coal exports.
I’m still waiting for the media to really get it. We reduce our emissions or you’re children will suffer hugely.
Nader , running in 2000, was a “spoiler” and denied Gore the election. As I see it, Nader gave Bush the Whitehouse, and now we have a fascist state supported by Bush’s corporate co-conspirators. Mr. Nader, look at the misery you have caused! (from Marblehead)
hsk01945 your comment is despicable as is your wide miss of the true reason we have to endure this Bush junta. Get yourself clued in and stop blaming Mr. Nader. The supreme court “denied Gore the election,” illegally in violation of our constitution, which has been targeted for destruction all along.
All Mr. Nader has done his whole career is try to inform, educate, and help save the lives of all Americans from corporate raiders and mal-informed people. Including yourself. Some thanks. With people like you calling themselves progressives, the righteous opposition is doomed. DOOMED!
Nader should run again now that we have begun to regain our sanity. Spoiler talk is silly stuff. The national conversation was greatly enhanced by Nader’s campaign and will continue to be. Non-conformity is never spoiling — on the contrary is is freshening! Breath deep.
Is it possible to educate or to embarrass anyone who continues to blame the 2000 election on Ralph Nader? Would they even be worthy of comment were they not so numerous, you know, like Bill O’Reilly fans and Bush supporters, the intellectual elite of America?
Ralph Nader’s simple point was this, the Democrats are owned lock, stock and barrel by Israel and corporate America, in virtually identical form to the Republicans. This is news only to those who have recently arrived by spaceship from the planet Zebulon. Just listen to Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, and Barak Obama and the rest as they crawl on their bellies for the edification of their AIPAC masters and promise to murder hundreds of thousands of Iranian children in exchange for AIPAC’s magical blessing. If this doesn’t cause the petals to fall from your eyes, then, quite frankly, nothing will.
Nader’s too vindictive to be a national leader: He’s too obsesssed with attacking anyone who he thinks has looked at him the wrong way, or thought of looking at him so. I think he’d just cheapen the political process, now, no matter how informative or logical much of his writing is. Maybe his mental health is starting to deteriorate possibly with age. Regardless, he appears to be a sourpuss thats been sucking lemons too long. He doesen’t project a friendly personality or one I’d feel comfortable voting for.