On this day, 55 years ago, nearly 10% of Americans participated in one of the country’s most time-honored traditions – they took to the streets (or, in some cases, the rivers) in peaceful protest. All told, it is estimated that nearly 20 million people gathered across the country to raise awareness about threats to the quality of our air and water and environment.
The day was the brainchild of Wisconsin senator Gaylord Nelson, who originally conceived of it as a day for “teach-ins” at university campuses across the country. April 22nd was picked as a good time between spring break and finals. But the movement, eventually named “Earth Day,” grew well beyond college campuses, attracting millions upon millions of Americans. The outcry led to all sorts of changes to federal legislation – from the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, to the adoption of laws like the Clean Water Act – that would be signed into law by president Richard Nixon.
The day was also made possible by science.
That’s not because scientists were in the streets calling for change (although it’s safe to assume some were), but because scientists had been hard at work for decades trying to help us understand how human activity was impacting the world around us.
Thanks to a huge amount of research across the country, it was widely understood that severely polluted air and water had immense public health and environmental impacts. Yes, Rachel Carson’s influential book, Silent Spring, sounded the alarm over the use of the pesticide DDT and its killing of birds and galvanized public consciousness. But the movement was also built on the shoulders of research that had come decades before, like chemist Alice Hamilton’s work tying leaded gasoline to severe human health impacts or MIT scientist Ellen Swallow Richard’s work showing human activity’s impact on water quality in Massachusetts.
In fact, the growing public consciousness that led to the first Earth Day was the result of nearly 100 years of research on industrial pollution, human health and the environment.
Today, of course, it’s easy to take this progress for granted. We don’t see many rivers catching fire anymore. Sure we still deal with issues like nutrient pollution, algal blooms and invasive species, but our waters have measurably improved across the country. Fifty-five years ago, a factory could, in many cases, simply run a wastewater pipe to the nearest stream – a practice that is almost unthinkable now.
But, as we celebrate this particular Earth Day, we face some very uncertain times. Many of these landmark laws are being rolled back. Science across the country has been halted as federal grants are frozen or, in many cases, revoked. The universities where much of this science is done are facing waves of changes and demands from a new administration.
Despite all of this uncertainty, facts still matter. Science is still a powerful tool for building knowledge about the world around us. While science can never tell society what it should do, it can tell society what the consequences of its actions are likely to be.
Thanks to Earth Day, our waters are so much better off than they were 55 years ago. Hopefully, we can continue to use this decades-worth of knowledge – and continue adding to and updating that knowledge – so that we can ensure our invaluable freshwater systems are thoughtfully managed and protected for the generations to come.
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Want to learn more about how you can support science? Here’s a good place to start.