Born of an era defined by student activism, Earth Day began 40 years ago on April 22, 1970. Initiated by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson, for whom University of Wisconsin’s Nelson Institute is named, the first Earth Day was a nationwide event.

There was a sunrise ceremony in Washington, D.C. where 1 million people gathered on Central Park’s Great Lawn. Another event blossomed on the downtown streets of Chicago’s Loop. In Madison, passionate students flocked to Library Mall in large numbers.

Madison Origins

“We thought we would save the environment,” said Harold Jordahl, who was on the original Earth Day Planning Committee and a key advisor to Nelson, and now teaches in the UW Department of Urban and Regional planning.

Devised over late night cocktails, Jordahl said he was initially skeptical about the possibility of orchestrating a nationwide teach-in event about the environment.

Cognizant that similar teach-ins on the war in Vietnam and civil rights across the country often quickly devolved into riots that drew hoards of police and tear gas, Jordahl was nonetheless optimistic this environment could be overcome. He decided to go ahead in helping Nelson orchestrate a productive and peaceful national event.

After assembling a small committee, the event planning began. Jordahl said though they would offer student groups around the country ideas for events over the phone, the strategy was largely ad hoc and left up to individual groups to plan the specific events.

“Once they caught onto the idea…they became really cranked up and motivated to do something, and they did many different and wonderful things,” Jordahl said.

Back home in Madison, the gears had already begun turning in preparation for such an event.

“There were hundreds of organizations already in place in Wisconsin,” said Kenneth Bowling, original Earth Day Planning Committee member.

One such group was the Capital Community Citizens of which David Mollenhoff was a member.

Of the major themes identified by the environmentalist group, the most pronounced was concern over the rapid population growth of Madison during that time and the concurrent urban sprawl that was widely celebrated.

“Above all else, we wanted to stop the worship of this growth god — the idea that growth is good in and of itself,” Mollenhoff said.

The group grew from 50 members to more than 300 by the first Earth Day event in 1970. They played an integral role in planning and executing the events of that day, which inevitably sparked a national movement that in certain respects still continues today.

Evolution of the day

In the four decades since the first Earth Day spurred, the modern environmental movement, political agendas, public knowledge and science itself have changed tremendously, according to Denis Hayes, who served as a national coordinator for Earth Day events in 1970.

“In many ways, everybody knows what you’re talking about now when you raise these issues,” Hayes said. “In 1969, that wasn’t true. Most people wouldn’t even have been able to give you a working definition of what the environment was. It has really permeated the culture and the economy, so it requires a different sort of response in that context.”

Hayes added that in 1970, environmental concerns centered primarily on those things people perceived with the senses: black smog, brown sludge and pollution in general. Today’s main issues involve invisible, tasteless, scent-less carbon accumulating in the atmosphere, the acidification of the world’s oceans and the growth of its population beyond sustainable limits.

“So that’s an entirely different kind of battle, because nobody was denying that the air in Los Angeles was as thick as split-pea soup,” Hayes said. “You just had to be there and you could see it.”

Such a different battle is it that some are even claiming Earth Day is now irrelevant. Most notably, this includes Alex Steffen, the advocate, writer and blogger who founded the bright green environmentalism movement which focuses on “sustainable innovation as a path to prosperity.”

Earth Day Dissidence

In 2007 Steffen, who has spoken at the prestigious TED conference and is authoring his second book, called for that year’s Earth Day to be the last.

“(On Earth Day) hundreds of thousands of people who care about the environment will get together at protests, concerts, neighborhood clean-ups and tree-plantings… and accomplish almost nothing,” Steffen wrote in an essay posted to his online magazine Worldchanging. “Earth Day, which every year has become less and less the revolutionary event it once was, seems this year to have entered a new phase of meaninglessness.”

Steffen continued, equating Earth Day with wearing a rubber wristband or ribbon for issue awareness, calling it part of the “politics of gesture.”

Hayes, a close friend of Steffen’s, said Steffen often makes provocative assertions to draw discussion and attention to issues, but did not do so in this case with any hostility.

“It was, as much as anything, (Steffen) saying that we’ve outlived the period where [Earth Day] was needed,” Hayes said. “We know enough now, let’s stop having these educational things and do something else.”

Hayes, who is currently in Washington D.C. for events related to the anniversary of Earth Day, said he agrees with Steffen that there is a need for more deeply involved “environmental zealots” and definitive action, but disagrees that Earth Day has outlived its usefulness as an education and awareness tool.

“There’s a role in Earth Day for all different kinds of levels of engagement,” Hayes said. “But hopefully people who enter by tiptoeing into it will soon wade out to their knees and out to their hips and eventually become full fledged.”