Earth Day 2010: A Call to Action on Clean Energy

Forty years ago this spring, we were a nation divided by war in Vietnam. The Chevrolet Monte Carlo got 11 miles to the gallon. Simon and Garfunkel were making their way up the charts with “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” And the NRDC was just a handful of environmental lawyers sharing office space in New York City.

Environmental law itself was in its infancy. The government wasn’t organized to protect our country against the kind of pollution that had caused Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River to catch fire the year before.

Millions of Americans, though, dared to dream we might do better. They turned those dreams into action, gathering 40 years ago this April for the first Earth Day, and telling our leaders it was time for change.

By July, President Nixon had ordered the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency. Congress put teeth in the Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act was passed two years after that. The Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, followed the next year by the Safe Drinking Water Act and, in 1980, by the Superfund hazardous waste clean-up program.

Inside of a decade, the entire foundation of environmental protections in this country was put in place by the national movement galvanized by the first Earth Day.

On April 22 the nation will pause, once again, for Earth Day. For the 40th anniversary Earth Day, the mission is clear: a call to action on the single greatest environmental challenge of our time: curbing climate change.

Earth Day organizers are planning a massive rally on the National Mall in Washington three days after that - April 25 - to press for Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.

“We want to make this something that is a voting issue,” said Denis Hayes, who was national coordinator for the first Earth Day and is the chairman of Earth Day 2010.

“It’s now time to get angry,” Hayes said in a March 11 speech on Capitol Hill. “It’s time to be saying, ‘If you’re not right on climate, then you’re out of office.’”

Hayes was one of nearly a dozen environmental leaders and political activists who addressed about 100 environmental advocates from the West Lawn of the Capitol.

It was a diverse and passionate group that included Hilary Shelton, director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP, the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, and the Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., CEO of the Hip Hop Caucus, founded six years ago to amplify the political voice of people of color.

Forty years ago, said Yearwood, it “made perfect sense” for the environmental movement and the civil rights movement to evolve in tandem. Today, said Shelton, climate change puts at risk the health and future of all Americans, and is especially threatening to low-income people at home and abroad.

“This battle is not about equality; it’s about existence,” said Yearwood. “Future generations are counting on you to stand up and fight for clean energy now.”

NRDC Washington program director Wesley Warren looked back on the first Earth Day, months after Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon, proclaiming it in the moment “one giant leap for mankind.”

For a generation of Americans looking down on Earth through the cameras of astronauts like Armstrong, the image of our planet as a blue marble changed forever our understanding of how interconnected we all are.

“Now, this is our time,” said Warren. “It’s time we took the next great leap forward for mankind.”

That leap, said Warren, is to pass the comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation now before the Senate.

It will put Americans back to work developing the next generation of energy efficient cars, homes and workplaces. It will reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil by promoting wind, solar and other renewable power sources. And it will create a healthier future for our country, no less than the environmental revolution that reshaped our nation a generation ago.

“This,” said Warren, “is really the challenge of our times.”

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