Twenty million people rallied, marched and staged clean-ups across the country on April 22, 1970, the first Earth Day. Many carried signs that read “Mother Nature Bats Last.”
But who knew there would be actual bats involved?
Fifty years later, the COVID-19 pandemic is the starkest example of natural disasters foretold but not prepared for.
The destruction of unique habitats, logging of rainforests and consumption of displaced wildlife such as bats, chimps and endangered pangolins has led to most of our recent viral outbreaks, from AIDS and Ebola to the coronavirus. This only confirms the scientific consensus that human health and prosperity depend on a healthy environment.
The John Birch Society, a fringe, right-wing political advocacy group known for peddling conspiracy theories, claimed the first Earth Day was a veiled attempt to celebrate Russian communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin’s birthday. The reality is that a growing cross section of the American public had become increasingly concerned about air and water pollution, driven in part by the Santa Barbara oil spill and the Cuyahoga River fire the year before.
Until Earth Day 1970, industrial contamination simply hadn’t been on the radar of traditional conservation groups, which traced back to the wilderness protection efforts of Republican President Teddy Roosevelt.
Who knew there would be actual bats involved?
Today, the United States, once a leader in environmental stewardship, is led by a Republican president and Senate majority doing all they can to dismantle the nation’s green legacy and sell it off for parts. That includes prioritizing oil and gas production, loosening clean air and water rules, and rolling back auto emissions standards as a deadly virus that attacks the lungs is wreaking havoc around the world.
Among the leaders of this wrecking crew are Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist helming the Environmental Protection Agency, and David Bernhardt, the former oil lobbyist running the Department of Interior. In President Donald Trump’s administration, 15 of the top 20 environmental managers have direct ties to the fossil fuel industry. The speed by which this anti-environmental juggernaut is advancing — the Trump administration has targeted nearly 100 major environmental laws and regulations for rollbacks, according to a recent New York Times review — shows powerful new momentum for the anti-environmental movement.
On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, it’s worth reflecting on how we got from there to here.
From “Wise Use” To The White House
In 1988, a fringe group of anti-government organizations launched the “wise use” movement, which put out a 25-goal manifesto the following year. At the top of the list were opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling and the Tongass National Forest, in southern Alaska, to logging. The Trump administration has plans to do both.
In my 1994 book, “The War Against the Greens,” I identified the links between this anti-environmental backlash and industry efforts to establish the pro-corporate grassroots “astroturf” campaigns for “wise use” and “property rights” that exploded onto the scene between 1988 and 1995.
Without popular support, they still managed to stymie public lands reforms under the administrations of both Presidents George H.W. Bush (R) and Bill Clinton (D), often physically threatening green activists and federal employees. The illusion of a spontaneous anti-green citizen movement also attracted some notable media support. An environment reporter for The New York Times even referred to them as “mom and pop community environmental groups” in a discussion.
In the Trump administration, 15 of the top 20 environmental managers have direct ties to the fossil fuel industry.
Its real proprietors included mining companies, the timber and cattle industries, off-road vehicle manufacturers, the National Rifle Association and Exxon, with support from allies in real estate, development, and conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
The wise use movement