My remarks are titled, Earth Day - Where do we go from here? That, I think, is the right question to ask, and you are asking it at this conference. One of the three major objectives of this conference is to "Build on Earth Day." To provide some foundation a brief history of Earth Day and its purpose might be helpful.
For many years prior to Earth Day, it had been troubling to me that the critical matter of the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of our country. The President, the Congress, the economic power structure of the nation and the press paid almost no attention to this issue, which is of such staggering import to our future. It was clear that until we somehow got this matter into the political arena, until it became part of the national political dialogue, not much would ever be achieved. The puzzling challenge was to think up some dramatic event that would focus national attention on the environment. Finally, in 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to get the environment into the political limelight once and for all.
The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give national visibility to the issue by going on a nationwide conservation tour, spelling out in a dramatic language the serious and deteriorating condition of our environment, and proposing a comprehensive agenda to begin addressing the problem. No President had ever made such a tour, and I was satisfied this would finally force the issue into the nation's political agenda... The President liked the idea and began his conservation tour in the fall of 1963. Senators Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Joe Clark, and I accompanied the President on the first leg of the trip to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. For many reasons, the tour didn't achieve what I hoped for; it did not succeed in making the environment a national political issue. However, it was the germ of the idea that eventually flowered into Earth Day.
While the President's tour was a disappointment, I continued to hope for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea for Earth Day occurred to me in the spring of 1969 while on a conservation speaking tour out West.
At that time there was a great deal of turmoil on the college campuses over the Vietnam War. Protests, called anti-war teach-ins, were being widely held on campuses across the nation. On a flight from Santa Barbara to the University of California, Berkeley, I read an article on the teach-ins, and it suddenly occurred to me. Why not have a nationwide teach-in on the environment? That was the origin of Earth Day.
I returned to Washington, raised the funds to get Earth Day started, and prepared letters to the 50 governors and to the mayors of all the major cities explaining the event and requesting that they issue Earth Day Proclamations. I sent an Earth Day article to all of the college newspapers explaining the event, and one to Scholastic Magazine, which went to most of out grade and high schools.
In a speech given at Seattle in September, I formally announced that there would be a national environmental teach-in sometime in the spring of 1970. The wire services carried the story nationwide. The response was dramatic. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone inquiries poured in from all over the nation. Using my Senate staff, I ran Earth Day activities out of my office. By December the movement had expanded so rapidly that it became necessary to open an office in Washington to serve as a National Clearinghouse for Earth Day inquiries and activities.
Earth Day achieved what I had hoped for. The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy and finally force this issue prematurely into the political arena. It was a gamble, but it worked. An estimated twenty million people participated in the demonstration all across the country. Ten thousand grade schools and high schools, two thousand colleges, and one thousand communities were involved.
It was truly an astonishing grassroots explosion. The people cared, and Earth Day became the first opportunity they ever had to join in a nationwide demonstration to send a big message to the politicians - a message to tell them to wake up and do something.
It worked because of the spontaneous, enthusiastic response at the grassroots. Nothing like it had happened before. While organizing on college campuses was done very well, the thousands of events in our schools and communities were self-generated at the lower level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize the ten thousand grade schools and high schools and one thousand communities that participated. They simply organized themselves. That was the remarkable thing that became Earth Day.
Don't ever forget: If you want to move the nation to make hard decisions on important issues, the grassroots is the source of power. With it you can do anything - without it, nothing.
If we are going to move the nation to an environmentally sustainable economy, you and that young generation right behind you are going to have to do it - and I think you will.