Clear Lake’s Gaylord Nelson was the “father” of Earth Day

Wednesday dawned brightly with a promise of reaching nearly 70 degrees. But what also arrived was “Earth Day,” a celebration of the environment many Americans appreciate.

Some don’t realize how deep this area was involved in the concept of an “Earth Day.”

Gaylord Anton Nelson was an American politician and environmentalist from Wisconsin. He served as a United States Senator and governor and was the founder of Earth Day, which celebrates it’s 50th anniversary in 2020.

Why did Gaylord Nelson think Earth Day was important?

Nelson’s aim with the first Earth Day was to light a fire for the environment in Washington.

Earth Day was born in rural towns and big cities across the country in 1970, has remained an important annual way to raise awareness of local environmental issues each year.

Nelson was a leading figure in the fight against environmental degradation and social injustice in the twentieth century.

Nelson began his political career as one confident in both the political power of ordinary citizens and the government’s ability to promote the public good.

Though the 1950s brought prosperity to some Americans, Nelson’s attention was with those in the city and the countryside who were disadvantaged. He never overlooked the social and ecological costs of technological innovation and industrial expansion.

As a senator, Nelson contributed to important liberal reforms but struggled for years to interest his colleagues in environmental protections.

So he turned instead to the people, proposing April 22, 1970 as a day for Americans to speak out about the environmental crises they faced.

Earth Day’s massive public support forced politicians to see the severity of the problems and the extent of public concern.
The first Earth Day galvanized Congress into creating some of the most important U.S. environmental legislation. Gaylord Nelson earned environmentalism a lasting place in national politics.

Born in Clear Lake in the North Woods of Wisconsin in 1916, Nelson grew up admiring both the beauty of the Wisconsin land and the progressive politics of the state’s famous Senator “Fighting Bob” La Follette.

He earned his law degree at the University of Wisconsin and, after fighting in World War II, he returned to Madison where he helped revive the long-moribund Democratic Party.

The first “conservation governor”

Nelson’s innovative vision resonated with Wisconsin residents.

Through the 1950s, residents had grown increasingly concerned with their crowded and dilapidated state parks, the exploitation of public resources by private industry, and the pollution of the state’s waterways.

Nelson promised comprehensive reforms and was elected to two terms as governor. In office, he established unprecedented high levels of public funding for education, health care, unemployment, highways, and urban and rural development.

But it was Nelson’s overhaul of the state’s natural resource program that earned him a national reputation as the “conservation governor.”

He condensed a sprawling bureaucracy into a single Department of Resource Development and established a Youth Conservation Corps to create green jobs for over 1,000 unemployed young people.

Most striking, Nelson fought to earmark $50 million for the Outdoor Recreation Action Program (ORAP) to acquire land to be converted into public parks and wilderness areas. The extreme popularity of these conservation measures catapulted Nelson into the U.S. Senate in 1962.
Nelson once said, “Environment is all of America and its problems. It is rats in the ghetto. It is a hungry child in a land of affluence. It is housing not worthy of the name; neighborhoods not fit to inhabit.”

Nelson’s Earth Day: giving voice to a concerned nation

In 1969, Nelson devised a new approach to raise awareness and put pressure on politicians to act on environmental legislation.

Reflecting on the empowering effects of campus activism, Nelson proposed a day when citizens nationwide would host teach-ins to raise awareness of environmental problems. His proposal was met immediately with overwhelming support.

The national media widely broadcast the plans for this so-called “Earth Day” and Nelson’s office was flooded by enthusiastic letters.

An estimated 20 million Americans, young and old, gathered on April 22, 1970, to confront the ecological troubles in their cities, states, nation, and the planet—and to demand action from themselves and from their elected officials.

Nelson lost his reelection bid in 1980 at the dawn of the Reagan era. But he remained a national figure in environmental politics as Counselor of the Wilderness Society until his death in 2005.

He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest honor for civilians, in 1995. In the speech he gave that year to mark the 25th anniversary of Earth Day, he kept his gaze on the horizon:

“The opportunity for a gradual but complete break with our destructive environmental history and a new beginning is at hand…. We can measure up to the challenge if we have the will to do so — that is the only question. I am optimistic that this generation will have the foresight and the will to begin the task of forging a sustainable society.”