Earth Day
I was working out this morning, an old guy was leaving and said to the young woman behind the counter, “Happy Earth Day.”
She replied, “Is it Earth Day?”
That was my reaction, wouldn't have known.
I have a good story about Earth Day from long ago when it was part of my profession. Back in 2000, I was pushing renewables in California. I set up a satellite tour in LA for Denis Hayes on Earth Day’s 30th anniversary. Denis was the first Earth Day organizer back in 1970.
The wiki on first Earth Day seems pretty good. Basically the idea came from Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, “a conservationist,” which at that point was environmentalism. Conservation had long American roots, unfortunately, at best, a mixed legacy. Since the beginning of industrialization, conservation has been the most radical politics, bar none.
Nelson's idea came on the back of two newsworthy events. The first was an oil spill off Santa Barbara and even the pre-Oprah rich folks in Santa Barbara didn't much care for oil covering their beaches. The second was the burning of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland. Say what you will about ancient splitting seas, but setting a river on fire is a pretty good modern trick.
Everything about the first Earth Day was the politics of its era. It was the height of protest politics, putting together a march was overly valued. Blame the Civil Rights folks, though that’s unfair, but they didn't well teach the various cultural revolutionaries that flowed in their wake. Better and more accurate to say, the students didn't learn well, for the most part not at all.
The other representative politics of this new environmentalism was its direct connection to the faltering but still presiding DC New Deal Coalition, most especially its un-American unilateral focus on DC as key to all political action. The first Earth Day likes to take credit for the 1970 Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, but they had long been in the works with DC slowly coming around to address the growing clamor from below to do something about industrial pollution. In many ways, they were the last great acts of the DC New Deal Coalition with Mistah Nixon doing his best FDR imitation.
Fast forward 30 years, trying to drum up attention in California that people could now buy their electricity directly from renewable companies, I hawked Denis Hayes, who I liked, he was a solar advocate and there weren’t many. He was available to do interviews. Hell, it was Earth Day, in California, and I had the original organizer.
For two days, I contacted every local California TV news program, “Earth Day in a couple days.” A few knew that.
“You can interview the original organizer.” Pretty much no one knew him.
I was hoping to get a dozen, got three. I remember Denis walked into the studio rented for the noon hour and telling him only three hits. He said, “You really know how to stoke a guy's ego.”
I laughed, “Yeah, fuck, we're all in the same boat.” Two weeks later the whole electricity fiasco would start blowing up, all boats sunk.
On the way home from working out this morning, I stopped in a great little local market in Southern Michigan. The older woman behind the counter, who moves a lot of local produce said, “Happy Earth Day,” handing me a packet of wild flower seeds (at top) to plant for the bees. As Mr. Strummer sang those same years ago, “If you’re after getting the honey, then you don’t go killing all the bees.”
Unrelated — a big tip of the hat to Nelly Korda, playing golf at this level, this consistently, is remarkable.