(Image via NASA, December, 1968)
THE FIRST EARTH DAY
April 22, 2023
If you watched television or read newspapers and magazines in America in 1970, you would hear about the Vietnam War every day. Walter Cronkite signed off his news broadcast every weeknight by telling us how many American soldiers, sailors, and Marines had died in Vietnam that day. The newspapers and magazines were filled with stories and pictures from the Vietnam War. TV news broadcasts and the newspapers came every day. The magazines came every week or month or as often as they published. There was no escape, none, from the stories and the pictures of war.
We did not get to see many coffins, as I recall, but we did see them. We also saw many, many images of dead bodies and pictures of horrible injuries. And blood. Lots of pictures with blood, mostly in color. Pictures were on television and in the newspapers and magazines in 1970.
In 1970, Americans were two years removed from the murders of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy. We were also two years removed from the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Lots appeared to be lost, or in the process of being lost.
Americans were also witnessing what most of us thought was the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Oh, we knew, yes, we did, that there was more struggle ahead, but in 1970, it had been seven years since the March on Washington and “I have a dream.” The targets of the Movement were no longer lunch counters and buses and hotels and motels. The struggles to be served food, to travel, and for overnight accommodations had all been won. In retrospect, we made the mistake, most of us, of equating these wins in these battles with winning the war.
Six days after the first Earth Day, on April 28, 1970, Nixon invaded Cambodia. It hadn’t happened yet, but it or something like it was in the air (particularly after Nixon saw the movie Patton three times). In less than two weeks, students would be gunned down at Kent State.
We had a lot going on in April of 1970. Even though we were not distracted by the internet or cable TV or Rupert Murdoch, we had our hands — and eyes — full in April, 1970. There was a boatload of things going on.
To be honest, I personally do not recall much about the first Earth Day. Like most people, I was certainly aware that it was happening, and I was vaguely aware that there were some events scheduled to highlight the environment and the impact of human beings and our activities. The events were almost all low-key, as I recall, or perhaps they seemed to be low-key given everything else that was going on at the time.
I hear a lot now about how people living back in the day — in this case, April, 1970 — should have done much more about pollution and climate change than we did. There is truth in that critique. However, to my mind saying that we should have done more than we did, skips over what we did do: The river in downtown Pittsburgh used to catch on fire pretty regularly, but we cleaned it up; the air we breathed became so much healthier to breathe that asthma was no longer a prison sentence requiring sufferers to be house-bound, and the water we drank was filtered for the first time in history, to name just a few examples. Lots more could have been done, that’s true, but don’t minimize the enormity of the task that confronted us then, and that has grown even larger since then. The real picture of what life was like in April of 1970 is not what you might have been told.
The real picture of what life was like then requires you to go back to that time and see what you would see then, hear what you would hear then, and smell the smells that you would smell then. Imagination has its place, but it cannot report lived experience to you. For that, you have to go back to the way life was lived then, without imagining it but instead revisiting it.
When I do that, when I revisit the way I lived life in April, 1970, I understand a little better why the first Earth Day didn’t command my attention the way other things did at that time. It speaks well of Earth Day that it is still important, in fact, is more important I think than it was in April, 1970. It speaks well of Earth Day’s longevity and its prominence in our lives in America, then and now. After all, Earth Day outlasted the Vietnam War. It is not just a misfortune that much remains to be done about the environment and the climate. Even if it were nothing more than a misfortune, we have no choice but to act. It is another challenge, perhaps the most important challenge, among other challenges to life in this country and in this world.
