Environmental Activist Byron Kennard Reminisces about the First Earth Day

The 50th anniversary of Earth Day inspires both reflection on past accomplishments and planning for work ahead. EESI staff were fortunate to sit down with author and life-long environmental activist Byron Kennard to discuss his new book, You Can’t Fool Nature: The Once and Future Triumph of Environmentalism, on the history of the environmental movement in the United States and his thoughts about the future of the movement. Mr. Kennard traveled across the country as a community organizer on behalf of the first Earth Day in 1970 and has had a long career in service of environmental causes.

 

This interview was edited for clarity and length.

 

 

Q: Tell me about how you got started in the environmental movement and Earth Day.

In the 1960s, I was a community organizer hired by the Conservation Foundation to travel the country and organize local groups to fight pollution. I did that and it was the easiest and the best job I ever had. It was the right idea at the right time.

 

Q: Why was that?

Everything just came together at once.

In the 1950s, there was this whole idea that the smokestack was a good thing, and the more that was coming out of the smokestack the better off we were.

Hazel Henderson was a young housewife in Manhattan in the 1960s. She noticed her curtains were always grimy no matter how many times she cleaned them. She thought it might be because of air pollution and complained to the health department in New York City. They told her the grime was coming from the sea. Obviously, this wasn’t true. So in 1964, she started Citizens for Clean Air and quickly got over 20,000 supporters.

The press took a great interest in environmental issues at this time too, so there was a lot of momentum leading up to Earth Day and then a decade of broad environmental concern.

 

Q: What about the role of Senator Gaylord Nelson and the environmental teach-in?

The teach-in model was used to conduct protests and activism. Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, proposed a national teach-in on the environment in 1969 and got a resolution from Congress endorsing the idea. I was then working for the Conservation Foundation, and Senator Nelson encouraged us to get the teach-in off the ground. It was so open and so free, you could have walked into our office off the streets and you could have been assigned to be the coordinator for a state. Whoever wanted to take part was welcome. It was exhilarating.

But I cannot tell you how the environmental teach-in became Earth Day. I don't know and nobody else knows. Somehow that name attached itself, and it worked and has worked for a half century, and will continue to work. 

Earth Day organized itself. There was no way seven people in D.C. could get 20 million people involved like that. We just set a date. The process was transformative. It couldn't have been directed from the top.

When Denis Hayes became the national coordinator of Earth Day, he said his principal concern was that this was going to be a student protest. But this was far more than just student radicals, it involved all sorts of people in all sorts of areas.

After Earth Day, we had our way on Capitol Hill. Bipartisanship characterized the movement. I look back and I say, “Did that really happen?” And it did!

 

Q: Tell me about that first Earth Day in 1970.

The first Earth Day... It was wild, it was wonderful. It was wide open; anyone could do anything. What we did do was create an excuse, an event where people could do what they wanted. So it was a very bottom-up experience, and people felt liberated to do their own thing in their own community, and the cumulative effect was world changing.

My book is about how this grassroots force—totally authentic and decentralized—created this social movement of environmentalism, which is one of the most powerful, influential and transformative movements in world history. My book is the best documentation of the many manifestations of change that came from Earth Day.

Somebody told me on Earth Day that the most profound consequence of Earth Day was that it would change the perception of generations yet unborn, and that's what I'm banking on to save the world.

 

Q: What are your thoughts on the future on the environmental movement and Earth Day?

The argument I make in my book is that there has been a lot we have learned in the past half century since Earth Day. Every profession that exists has been transformed. Now there’s environmental education, environmental economics, there's a field called green dentistry—everything was touched and transformed.

I argue that this has expanded our knowledge of how natural systems operate. Before Earth Day, ecology was a subset of biology and hardly anyone had heard of it. We promoted the ecological viewpoint which emphasizes that everything is connected to everything else.

 

Q: What makes you optimistic?

My book argues that thanks to 50 years of social learning—and I argue that social and cultural values are more important than politics—we know what to do and we know how to do it. We've been prevented from doing it, but now we're going to be doing it, because we're going to be led by young people who are not going to give up.

That's why I can be upbeat, because we have all these skills and knowledge to employ and so much enthusiasm and understanding from the next generation.

 

Mr. Kennard’s book, You Can’t Fool Nature: The Once and Future Triumph of Environmentalism, is available on Amazon here.

Mr. Kennard was interviewed by Amber Todoroff and Carol Werner.