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Earth Day’s First Day On Earth, 1970
Remember when Joni Mitchell first sang, Hey farmer farmer put away that DDT now? Probably not. But her ballad, written in 1970, protested the use of chemicals and pesticides which were invisibly killing the birds and the bees in industrial farming. The song also was one of the first in favor of protecting the environment.
Priming. In November, 1969, a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara put a crack in the system. Over the 1969–1970 holiday season, families gathered together in front of their television sets as network t.v. shared video clips of ordinary people trying to wash away the oily goo covering seals, otters and seabirds.
The Union Oil spill on Santa Barbara spotlighted the crude fact that no legal or regulatory mechanisms were in place to protect our environment. Seizing the moment, Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin) created Earth Day as a way to force this issue onto the national agenda.
At that time, there was no EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act. Lake Erie was dying and the other Great Lakes were threatened by pollution from steel plants, oil refineries, paper mills, and city sewage plants which…
