It was the 1960s, the age of the post-WWII consumer frenzy, of atomic explosions, of leaded gasoline, and the Vietnam War. The air pollution in Los Angeles was so bad that breathing it was the equivalent of smoking 2.5 packs of cigarettes per day.1 There was a lot to complain about, and this state of the environment gave rise to environmentalism as we know it today.
The Early Environmental Movement in the United States
Of course, American environmentalism wasn’t born in the 1960s. As early as 1690, Colonial Governor William Penn required Pennsylvania settlers to preserve one acre of trees for every five acres cleared.2 In the 1760s, Benjamin Franklin led a Philadelphia committee that attempted to regulate waste disposal and water pollution.3 Then Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Nature, Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden, and John Muir founded the Sierra Club in an effort to “do something for the wilderness and make the mountains glad.”4 Around the turn of the twentieth century, The Audubon Society fought the slaughter of birds for feathers, and Congress formed the National Park Service.5
What changed in the 1960s was that the ethic of conservation infected the masses and created an awesome sense of possibility. People believed that they could bring about change—and in many ways they did. Many credit Rachel Carson for igniting the environmental movement by writing the right book at the right time. Her book Silent Spring was first serialized by The New Yorker in June 1962. It explored the detrimental health and environmental effects of DDT, a chemical that had few opponents at the time. As one review explained, the revolutionary nature of Carson’s book, “was a new public awareness that nature was vulnerable to human intervention. Rachel Carson had made a radical proposal: that, at times, technological progress is so fundamentally at odds with natural processes that it must be curtailed.”6 The book sold 500,000 copies in 24 countries.7
The environmental movement in the U.S. is generally iconized as: Groovy peace signs, white middle-class college students, sun-tanned protesters, free love and acid and sunshine, vegan communes, Janis Joplin, and The Grateful Dead. There was talk of nature and love and revolution. It smelled like grass and youth. Many adults didn’t understand it, and as a result, a vast generational gap emerged. Poet and activist June Jordan expressed it this way:
When we heard about the hippies, the barely more than boys and girls who decided to try something different… we laughed at them. We condemned them, our children, for seeking a different future. We hated them for their flowers, for their love, and for their unmistakable rejection of every hideous, mistaken compromise that we had made throughout our hollow, money-bitten, frightened, adult lives.8
The 1960s ended with a blowout and a fire—symbols of an environment on the brink. First, in January of 1969, an oil well off the coast of Santa Barbara, California erupted and spilled 200,000 gallons of crude oil, covering 35 miles of beach with tar.9 Then in June of 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught fire. Time magazine described the Cuyahoga as the river that “oozes rather than flows” and in which a person “does not drown but decays.” The flames, fueled by oil and chemicals in the river, topped five stories.10 This was all in 1969, the year that humans saw footage of Earth from space for the first time, thanks to the Apollo program.11 Suddenly, the Earth seemed very small, smaller than ever before.
Then came the seventies, the decade of clean-up and birth of Earth Day! On April 22, 1970, twenty million people across the country celebrated Earth Day with teach-ins and protests. The event “achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders.”12 Shortly after Earth Day, environmentalists created the Dirty Dozen, a list of 12 political incumbents that had terrible environmental records. As a result, seven of the representatives were defeated in their elections, and politicians could no longer ignore environmental issues—green votes proved to have power.13 The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was created in 1970 and charged with the task of protecting human health and the environment, aiding Congress in enacting into law the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act.14 The 1970s also saw the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Greenpeace, the Worldwatch Institute, and the Land Institute.15
Importantly, the results of these efforts were immediate and tangible. In 1971 the U.S. Secretary of the Interior put whales on the endangered species list, and soon after whaling ended in the United States. In 1975, Atlantic salmon returned to the Connecticut River after 100 years of absence. A proposed damn in the Grand Canyon was effectively opposed. President Jimmy Carter even installed solar panels on the White House roof!16 The Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 created fuel shortages and increased oil prices from $4 to $30 a barrel in just seven years. In response, car manufacturers improved fuel efficiency.17
And then everyone lived happily ever after… Well, not exactly.
Environmentalism Today
Today’s environmental movement is different than that of 40 years ago. There are fewer environmentalists out on the streets, but more in corporate board rooms, in kitchens, and on Twitter. Today’s revolution is quieter and more complex. “What we were fighting in the early days you could see, you could taste, you could smell. What we’re worried about now are things like endocrine disruptors that people don’t even understand…and things like that many people think of as two lines crossing on a graph 20 years from now. That’s hard to get people excited about,” said Denis Hayes, national coordinator of the first Earth Day.18
Even so, we can still learn from the earlier revolution. The 1960s proved that all people, not just adults, not just politicians, but all people can make a difference. The revolution taught us that we can get good things done when we work together across party lines—in fact, the first Earth Day was organized by both a Democrat and a Republican.19 Moreover, the 60s and 70s proved that we can change our lifestyles—those little daily actions that affect nature in big ways… when we choose to. The hippies didn’t just talk about growing their own food. They did it. For ideas on greening your lifestyle, check out
We can also benefit from identifying the mistakes of the twentieth-century environmentalists. The hippies largely resisted technological innovation, even though technology is not inherently evil. The internet, solar panels, wind turbines—these are things few modern environmentalists would readily give up. When used thoughtfully, technology can improve our world. The environmentalists of the 60s and 70s were also criticized for involving few people outside of the white middle class and for deflecting attention from human rights issues. Today we must work to engage everyone in environmental discussions, regardless of demographics, and realize that the health of all humans is inherently linked to the health of our environment—we’re all in this together. And perhaps the most important thing the hippies taught us is that the easiest way to build a movement is to make it look fun!
