Opinion: On the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, much has changed

This year marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. A lot has changed since April 22, 1970. At that time, on college campuses, people against the Vietnam War were holding “teach-ins” to explain why they were opposed. Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin decided to adopt this idea by holding “teach-ins” on the environment on college campuses. The original name was “Environmental Teach-In.” And they chose April 22 because they wanted a date before the students left for the semester.

But the idea of Earth Day was much more powerful than Sen. Nelson at first imagined. Soon there were many kinds of Earth Day events taking place on campuses as well as in cities and towns throughout the country. It was an enormous success.

I learned all these things and more from historian Adam Rome’s insightful book “The Genius of Earth Day.” Its strength, he tells us, was its reliance on the people. That was actually an accident. The organizers at first tried to exert control, but they had neither the time nor the resources to direct things. So each community developed its own ideas. In some places, there were community-wide events that lasted more than one day. The festivities were mostly run by volunteers, students, housewives and professional people. They were held in high schools and churches, as well as colleges. In New York City, Fifth Avenue was closed to automobile traffic and the street became a park. Enormous crowds listened to concerts and heard speeches.

At Penn State, although Earth Day events attracted several thousand people, the week was actually dominated by violent protests from students demanding that the university cut its ties to the military, leading to the arrest of 29 students and forcing the president of the university to flee his home as it was attacked. Despite these violent demonstrations, Earth Day was a success. Led by two undergraduate students, “the activities included film showings, exhibits, and games,” but the main focus “was a series of interdisciplinary panels on population, air quality, water resources, solid-waste disposal, land-use conflicts, transportation, and environmental health.” Allen Street was closed for the day for speeches, including remarks by the candidates for governor. That night “the street became a festival of folk music, drama, and film.”

To all the environmental issues discussed on that first Earth Day, we must now add the pressing problem of climate change. Its seriousness was not realized 50 years ago. The topic is not even in the index of Rome’s book.

The enthusiasm of ordinary people made the first Earth Day possible and that same force can be harnessed to solve climate change. We need to make changes in our lives, but even more important, we need to push our elected officials to put in place policies to price carbon. We know that if we want to discourage somebody from buying something we increase the price. We did that with cigarettes and we need to do it with fossil fuels as well.

The genius of pricing carbon is that solutions will come from the people. Once carbon is priced correctly, we will not have to rely solely on government regulations or directives. Instead everybody, from simple consumers to titans of industry, will be looking for ways to use less of the more expensive fossil fuels. If we let loose the ingenuity of the American people, they will invent solutions to this problem. Everybody will have an economic incentive to come up with something different. There is not one solution, just as there is not just one way to celebrate Earth Day.

By harnessing the forces of democracy and capitalism we can bring about this change. Please join this effort so that 50 years from today in 2070, when people once again celebrate Earth Day, they will praise our generation for helping to stop climate change.