50 Years of Earth Day

I don’t remember as much about the first Earth Day, in 1970, as I do the one ten years later.

By the time of the tenth anniversary I was working at the state capitol. A few days prior, an enterprising young reporter rounding up some Earth Day notes phoned me. She said someone had mentioned that I rode my bike to the office every day. I probably said “So what?” but somehow this activity fit into her narrative of grassroots participation. It turned out to be part of a photo essay with scenes of lots of people doing Earth-y things.

At the time, I lived out on Lealand Lane and my bike route to work crossed the Lipscomb campus, then up Belmont Boulevard to 16th, and beyond. It was a pleasant ride that only got dicey when I got downtown, competing with the traffic, the sudden opening of car doors, and all. Screaming helped. (Some cities may have had bicycle lanes back then. The Music City did not as yet.)

Also by this time, I had found a new secret at the capitol building. On the northeast corner of the ground floor, I discovered a shower. Someone told me that particular suite had once been the office of Anna Belle Clement, the top staff assistant and patronage coordinator to her brother Governor Frank Clement (1953-59, 1963-67). By this time, “Miss Anna Belle” was a state senator, with a different office down in the Legislative Plaza. But I was glad for the surviving perk, as it helped the transformation from shorts into office attire.

Anyway, Earth Day. Fifty years of observing it now. This time has seen much progress for the condition of the environment we all share, especially in the U.S., and much of that through the bipartisan wins in Congress. 

Some of the effort was local, but the most profound progress was in federal policy, during the Nixon Administration, with the establishment of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970. In Tennessee, state legislation enacted during the Republican administration of Governor Winfield Dunn – together with bipartisan advocacy by Democrats who dominated the General Assembly – helped to clear streams and skies of pollution. Other reforms were imposed by Congress upon the TVA.

There have been policy backslides from time to time, like the Trump administration removing the U.S. from the Paris Accords, but overall much progress. Chattanooga and Nashville are good examples, of course, where the chronic sooty air eventually gave way to clearer skies and streets after much legislation combined with civic resolve. Before the industrial pollution was checked in Chattanooga, for instance, they say you couldn’t see the sun in the sky at high noon.

In Washington, the occasional administration tries to reverse or scale back some of the toughest standards that history and humans have won. That is happening again now (examples abound) but now at least the stakes involved in climate change are more broadly understood as harmful to everybody. It’s never easy, and progress we know is never assured.

It’s smart to let each observance of Earth Day remind us how it pays to stay vigilant in defense of our streams and our air and our planet. Much mischief and retreat and degradation can happen on all the other days of the year.