United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of
Public Affairs (A-107i
Washington DC 20460
August 1989
&EPA Earth Day Recollections
An EPA Journal Reprint
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Primed on Recycled Paper
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Earth Day Recollections
Where We Were
And Where We Are
by Gaylord Nelson
Of all the issues that challenge
mankind on the planet, the one that
stands out above all others concerns
man and his environment. No other
issue is more relevant to our physic.al
well-being than the status of our natural
resources.
Unfortunately, we are preoccupied
with responding to pressures of daily
events, postponing hard decisions on
pervasive, long-term problems under the
delusion that delay won't cost very
much, and that we can address the
problem at some other time. Until we
understand that the problems of the
environment are urgent—that every
delay exacts a price, levies a hidden tax,
imposes a cost which will ultimately
impoverish us—until we understand
that, and believe, and are willing to act
on the proposition that the highest and
first priority of our society must be to
preserve the integrity and viability of
those ecosystems that sustain us and all
other creatures: until then, we will
continue to delude ourselves with the
seductive notion that we are addressing
the heart of the matter when, in fact, we
are merely tinkering at the periphery of
the problem.
I don't mean to suggest that we
haven't made significant progress in the
last decade and a half or so. Indeed we
have come a long way, much more
quickly than I thought possible in 1970
and '71. A whole series of legislative
initiatives have been adopted involving
air pollution, water pollution.
pesticides, hazardous wastes. We have
designated 90 million acres of public
lands a wilderness. We have made
extensive additions to our National Park
System and Wildlife Refuges. We have
an endangered species protection act
which is a modest success but needs to
be improved. We are close to agreement
on a national program on acid rain
control.
Most important of all, there has been
a revolutionary change in the public
The Santa Barbara oil spill of 1969 was one event that helped catalyze the new
environmental consciousness of Earth Day and the 1970s The full measure of social and
ecological costs to be borne in the wake of environmental contamination is not easily
quantifiable in cost-benefit terms Santa Barbara News-Press photo.
attitude and understanding of
environmental issues. For the first time.
the environment is part of the political
dialogue of the nation. No politician can
totally ignore it. Even those who have
no serious interest in the issue pay lip
service to it because they need to
respond to the concerns of their
constituents. But one more revolution is
needed. That will come when our
President, the Congress, and the public
put this issue on the agenda of top
national priorities along with the
economy and war and peace.
That is bound to happen, but will it
be soon enough? We still have to deal
with those powerful forces in the
country who do not believe the problem
is serious, and therefore that the
environmental laws and standards are
unnecessary and should not be
enforced. There are others who think we
cannot afford a clean environment, and
there are those who oppose any
governmental interference in the
marketplace. They believe good
intentions and competition will
somehow resolve this problem in due
time.
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We have come a long way,
much more quickly than I
thought possible in 1970 and
1971.
We still have to deal with
those powerful forces in the
country who do not believe the
problem is serious ....
There are those—"supply side
environmentalists"—who believe that
self-help, free market, do-it-yourself
environmentalism will work if we all
just calm down and give it a chance for
a decade or two. If you go into the free
marketplace to buy some fresh air and
none is available, just hold your breath.
and as the demand increases, the price
will rise and the classic, forces of simply
and demand will take over. Then there
will be an abundant supply, the price
will fall, and even the1 poor people will
be able to buy some. It all sounds pretty
good if you don't think about it too
hard.
Over the past four or five years we '
have, ever more frequently, heard the
argument that high environmental
standards cost too much. They put an
excessive end unnecessary burden on
business and industry. The costs exceed
the benefits. They want to institute a
system that weighs benefits against costs
to provide ammunition in support of
proposals to weaken environmental
standards. And on the other hand, there
are others who support such assessment
because they believe that the
overwhelming weight of the evidence
will demonstrate that most
environmental mandates need to be
strengthened.
The reason the two parties reach
opposite conclusions while appearing to
support the same proposition is that
they, in fact, are not supporting the*
same kind of benefit-cost assessment.
Those who want to use the benefit-cost
approach to weaken support for
environmental mandates do not include
all societal costs and benefits, only
those that are easily quantifiable in
current dollar costs to the polluter and
measurable on the consumer price
index. They do not include the societal
cost of a polluted river, a lake or forest
destroyed by acid rain, an aquifer
poisoned by toxic chemicals, or a
wildlife refuge destroyed by selenium.
If all such costs and benefits are
included, the case is clear beyond
question that preserving a clean
environment is a profitable investment.
Liner in Yosemite National Park. National
Park Service photo
This arguement is aimed at a major
proposition being advanced by some
environmental critics who insist that at
some point we must make a choice
between a prosperous economy and a
dirty environment, or a clean
environment and a poor economy.
Those who would dramatically
weaken environmental protection claim
we must, indeed, make a choice
between the two, assuming the two are
separable and must be addressed as
discrete entities standing alone. They
are wrong by every rational standard of
measurement. 1 assume we are using the
word "environment" in its broadest
context to include all physical
resources. They are all part of the
environment. The appropriate
generalization to be made is that the
economy and the environment are
inextricably intertwined; a degraded
environment and a poor economy travel
hand-in-hand. While you can have a
country rich in resources with a poor
economy, you cannot have a rich
economy in a country poor in its
resources or its access to them. Each
incremental degradation of nature's
resources—the air, the water, the soil,
forests, scenic beauty, habitats—is a
dissipation of capital assets which will
ultimately be paid for by a lower
standard of living and a lower-quality
environment.
Can anyone tell us what the economic
and recreational loss to the nation will
be unless we move now to save our
lakes from acid rain? What is the
economic value of the protein sources
in the oceans and the water in our
rivers? If we continue to destroy the salt
water marshes and pollute the estuaries
and the shallow waters of the
continental shelf which provide the
breeding habitat of most marine
creatures, we ultimately will destroy the
productivity of the oceans. Has that
been factored into the economic
equation in the debate over clean water
standards?
These and other questions can be
asked and every time the answer will be
that it is far better for the economy and
cheaper to maintain a clean
environment than a dirty one In the
short run. some very modest temporary
benefit to the economy might result
from relaxed air and water quality
standards, but it would be dangerous
and enormously expensive If we do
that, it simply means we are borrowing
capital from future generations and
counting it on the profit side of the
ledger.
Quite apart from the ethical questions
involved, there is simply no way that a
future generation could replace the
capital we borrow from them, because
we cannot restore a polluted ocean or a1"
polluted lake. The ultimate test of a
man's conscience is his willingness to
sacrifice something today for a future «
generation whose words of thanks will
never be heard. D
(Nelson, a former U.S. Senator from
Wisconsin, ivas (he founder of Earth
Day, which first look place in April
1970. He is now Counselor of the
Wilderness Society and associated with
the University of Wisconsin at Stevens
Point.)
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Earth Day Recollections:
What ft Was Like
When The Movement
Took Off
by John C. Whitaker
Concerned students wore masks and decorated garbage trees to
pay homage to Earth Day, 1970. Where are they now?
Don Hogan Charles photo, NYT Pictures.
When President Nixon and his staff
walked into the White House on
January 20, 1969/we were totally
unprepared for the tidal wave of public
opinion in favor of cleaning the nation's
environment that was about to engulf
us. If Hubert Humphrey had become
President, the result would have been
the same.
During the 1968 presidential
campaign, neither the Nixon nor
Humphrey campaign gave more than lip
service to environmental issues. Rather,
their thoughts focused on such issues as
Vietnam, prosperity, the rising crime
rate, and inflation. Nixon made one
radio speech on natural resources and
the quality of the environment, which
seemed adequate to cover an issue that
stirred little interest among the
electorate.
During the 1968 presidential
campaign, neither the Nixon
nor Humphrey campaign gave
more than lip service to
environmental issues.
In the Humphrey camp, things were
just as quiet. He dedicated a park in San
Antonio, Texas, and the John Day Dam
in Oregon, using both occasions to
discuss the environment and
conservation. Otherwise, Humphrey,
said nothing on the issue.
If the candidates showed little interest
in the issue, so did the national press
corps. In fact, Nixon staff members do
not recall even one question put to him
about the environment.
Yet only 17 months after the election,
on April 22, 1970, the country
celebrated Earth Day, with a national
outpouring of concern for cleaning up
the environment. Politicians of both
parties jumped on the issue. So many
politicians were on the stump on Earth
Day that Congress was forced to close
down. The oratory, one of the wire
services observed, was "as thick as smog
at rush hour."
A comparison of White House polls
(done by Opinion Research of Princeton,
New Jersey) taken in May 1969, and just
two years later in May 1971, showed
that concern for the environment had
leaped to the forefront of our national
psyche. In May 1971, fully a quarter of
the public thought that protecting the
environment was important, yet only 1
percent had thought so just two years
earlier. In the Gallup polls, public
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concern over air and water pollution
jumped from tenth place in the summer
of 1969 to fifth place in the summer of
1970, and was perceived as more
important than "race," "crime," and
"teenage" problems, but not as
important as the perennial poll leaders,
"peace" and the "pocketbook" issues.
In the White House, we pondered this
sudden surge of public concern about
cleaning up America and providing
more open spaces for parks, and a
heightened awareness of the necessity to
dedicate more land for wildlife habitat.
Why, we asked, after it was so long
delayed, was the environmentalist
awakening so much more advanced in
the United States than in other
countries? What motivated millions to
so much activity so long after
publication of Rachel Carson's Si/ent
Spring in 1962? Many factors seem to
have been involved.
First, the environmental movement
probably bloomed at the time it did
mainly because of affluence. Americans
have long been relatively much better
off than people of other nations, but
nothing in all history compares even
remotely to the prosperity we have
enjoyed since the end of World War II,
and which became visibly evident by
the mid-fifties. An affluent economy
yields things like the 40-hour week,
three-day weekends, the two-week paid
vacation, plus every kind of labor-saving
gadget imaginable to shorten the hours
that used to be devoted to household
chores. The combination of spare money
and spare time created an ambiance for
the growth of causes that absorb both
money and time.
Another product of affluence has been
the emergence of an "activist" upper
middle class—college-educated,
affluent, concerned, and youthful for its
financial circumstances. The nation has
never had anything like this "mass
elite" before. Sophisticated, resourceful,
politically potent, and dedicated to
change, to "involvement," it formed the
backbone of the environmentalist
movement in the United States.
Other factors included the rise of
television and the opportunities it
provides for advocacy journalism.
Also, science contributed another
dimension to the national agitation. To
the obvious signs of pollution that
people could see. feel, and smell,
science added a panoply of invisible
threats: radiation, heavy metal poisons,
chlorinated hydrocarbons in the water,
acidic radicals in the atmosphere, all
potentially more insidious, more
pervasive, and more dangerous than the
familiar nuisances. This could happen
only in a country able to support a
large, advanced scientific community
with an immense laboratory
infrastructure, marvelously sensitive
instruments, intensive funding,
computers, data banks, and vast
interchanges of information able to
isolate and trace the progress through
the ecosystem of elements and
compounds at concentrations measured
in parts per billion, and to establish
their effects upon living organisms in
the biosphere.
In the Gallup polls, public
concern over air and water
pollution jumped from tenth
place in the summer of 1969 to
fifth place in the summer of
1970 ..
!HHH
The press served the pollinating
function of a honey bee, transporting
the latest scientific findings to the
public, which reacted with fear and
misgivings. These in turn were relayed
by the press back to the scientific
community, which was stimulated by
public concern to intensify its
investigations, leading to more
discoveries of new perils, and so on.
This in itself provided a climate in
which support for environmentally
related causes could be elicited.
The feverish pitch of Earth Day 1970
passed, but the environmental
movement did not go away. Instead, the
drive for a cleaner environment became
part of our national ethic. Now it is
taken for granted, the best possible
testimonial that progress is being made.
Our nation's thinking has changed.
Endorsing growth without regard to the
quality of that growth seems forever
behind us. The failure of the economy
to take into full account the social costs
of environmental pollution is being
rectified. Not only are environmental
considerations now factored into federal
government decision-making but over
and over again Americans pay for
Photo courtesy of The White House.
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East Terrace, U.S. Capitol. Washington Convention and Visitors Association photo.
low-polluting or pollution-free products
like low-sulfur heating oil, unleaded
gasoline, and coal from fully reclaimed
strip mines, for automobile emission
controls, for electricity from cleaner
fuels, and for more parklands and
wildlife refuges. More fundamentally,
we are beginning to understand that the
environment is an independent whole
of which man is only a part.
But in the early 1970s it was clear
that the executive branch could not
respond to public demand to clean up
the environment without first creating
an organization to do the job. Better
coordination of federal environmental
programs was needed. There were 44
agencies in nine separate departments
with responsibilities in the field of what
was then loosely described as "the
environment and natural resources." No
department had enough expertise to
take charge.
At cabinet meetings, HEW Secretary
Bob Finch, responsible for air pollution
controls, and Transportation Secretary
John Volpe, argued over which
department should take the lead in
developing a research program for
unconventional low-polluting
So many politicians were on
the stump on Earth Day that
Congress was forced to close
down.
automobiles. On pesticides, Walter
Hickel at Interior and Finch argued for
tighter pesticide controls, while
Agriculture Secretary Clifford Hardin
emphasized the increased crop
productivity resulting from the
application of pesticides. And Secretary
of State Bill Rogers weighed in
expressing concern on whether a ban on
DDT in this country might restrict the
supply of DDT to the developing
countries. Hickel, who at the time
handled water pollution control over at
Interior, wanted more money for sewage
treatment control; Bob Mayo, director of
the Bureau of Budget would have none
of it. Maurice Stans at Commerce was
wary of tighter pollution controls and
what effect this might have on corporate
profits. Paul McCracken, Chairman of
the President's Council of Economic
Advisors, worried that we would be
uncompetitive in international markets
if our product prices reflected the costs
of pollution abatement standards that
were more stringent than those of other
countries. There was hardly a Cabinet
officer who did not have a stake in the
environment issue. Even the Postmaster
General joined the debate, offering to
use postal cars to test an experimental
fleet of low-pollution cars.
The cabinet meeting left President
Nixon dissatisfied. There was no overall
strategy, too many unanswered
questions. Should enforcement be done
by regulation, or by user fees, or a
combination of both? What were the
overall costs to industry and the
consumer in terms of both the increased
price products for various pollution
abatement schedules under varying
standards and regulations? Finally, what
would the various clean-up scenarios do
to the federal budget? Nixon clearly
needed a "pollution czar" and one
agency to look to for the answers.
First, Nixon discarded the- option of a
Department of Environment and Natural
Resources as well as several other
reorganization plans. In July 1970 he
submitted to Congress the
Environmental Protection Agency plan:
the new agency came into being on
December 2, 1970. Meanwhile, I had
interviewed a number of candidates to
run the new agency and recommended
Bill Ruckelshaus to the President. I've
missed the mark on lots of things in my
life, but Ruckelshaus was a "bull's eye."
Now, years later, the
accomplishments of the Nixon years are
plain to see. New clean air, water, solid
waste, and pesticide laws, coastal zone
management planning seed money, new
national parks, including the great
urban parks in New York City and San
Francisco harbors. In addition, Nixon
ordered federal agencies to shed spare
federal acreage that would be converted
into parks and recreation areas,
especially in urban areas. More than
82,000 acres in all 50 states were
converted into 642 parks, the majority
of them in or very close to cities, really
bringing parks to the people.
More money was dedicated to buying
wildlife habitat; Congress passed
Nixon's controversial proposal to
protect endangered species. Nixon's
executive orders restricted ocean
dumping and tightened environmental
standards for off-shore oil drilling. To
quell the insatiable development
instincts of the Army Corps of Engineers
he cancelled construction of the
Cross-Florida Barge Canal.
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What Nixon—and subsequent
presidents—couldn't accomplish is
to address in a rational way the cost of
pollution abatement control: how fast
should the nation clean up and at what
cost? In the early 1970s, our polls
clearly showed the public demanded a
cleaner environment, but data on the
public's willingness to pay was
ambivalent. Our initial Opinion
Research polls showed that about
three-fourths of the public supported
more government spending for air and
water pollution abatement programs,
that support existed in all population
groups, and that it was particularly high
among the young. But this did not mean
that taxpayers had committed
The feverish pitch of Earth
Day 1970 passed, but the
environmental movement
did not go away.
themselves to spending their own
money to improve the quality of the •
environment. Spending for government
programs never seems to equate in the
public's mind with spending their own
money. Opinion Research reported that
in May 1971, three-fourths of the public
would pay small price increases for
pollution control, but six out of 10
opposed large price inreases for that
purpose.
A Harris poll in October 1971
indicated that 78 percent of the public
would be willing to pay (how much was
not specified) to have air and water
pollution cleaned up, and 48 percent
would accept a 10-percent reduction in
jobs for a cleaner environment. Poll
editor Hazel Erskine indicated that
individuals were not "personally ,
anxious" to foot the bill for correcting
pollution damage, although willingness
to pay for pollution control was
growing.
Congress received even stronger
messages. Twenty-two congressmen, in
a survey of 300,000 Americans in
varying kinds of congressional districts,
asked constituents if they were willing
to pay more for pollution control.
Respondents in all but three districts
answered affirmatively. Representative
Gerald Ford asked his Michigan
constituents, "Should the federal
government expand efforts to control air
and water pollution even if il costs you
more in taxes and prices?" The. answer:
68.3 percent yes, 27.5 percent no.
Subsequently, Ford voted to override
President Nixon's veto of the Federal
Water Pollution Control Act
Amendments of 1972. (Nixon vetoed it
largely because of the very heavy federal
expenditures, particularly for sewage
treatment plants.) Not surprisingly,
because the perspective almost always
changes inside the oval office,
President Ford later tried unsuccessfully
to hold down sewage treatment
expenditures, as has every president
since then.
Nixon knew he would pay a political
price by not proposing the "toughest"
and costliest pollution control
standards, but after looking at the
federal budget and the macro-economic
impact, he chose a more moderate
course. As it turned out, Congress,
fanned by the political hurricane of the
environmental movement, enacted
deadlines that could never be met, like
the 1977 deadline for secondary
treatment of municipal waste, and an
$18 billion appropriation over the
three-year life of the law, which
couldn't even be dispensed under the
law's cumbersome grant system.
Similarly, Congress legislated
technology that didn't exist by setting
emission standards for automobiles that
couldn't be met and later had to be
postponed. The missed 1987 year-end
ozone deadlines is another glaring
example of Congress' tendency to
legislate non-existent technology.
Early in the process we recognized
that Congress and the executive branch
mistrusted each other's cost impact
figures for various pollution reduction
strategies. Even in executive branch
meetings, the EPA staff repeatedly
seemed to minimize pollution costs,
while other agencies weighed in with
high costs to meet the identical
pollution standard. Often, we halved the
difference, relaxing the standard more
than EPA wanted, but keeping it much
tighter than Commerce, for example,
found acceptable.
We might have missed a chance in
those early days to help resolve the
debate. Russ Train, chairman of the
Council on Environmental Quality, and
I proposed setting up a national body
with think tank funds plus matching
federal funds to study cost-benefit
analysis for pollution controls. We
hoped that if a body removed from
Congress and the executive branch did
the number crunching, then perhaps the
results would be more acceptable to all
parties inside the beltway. The idea
never reached the President, largely
because Chuck Colson opposed our
candidate to head this study group, and
Colson beat me out in the White House
staff warfare that goes on in any
Administration.
Today Americans spend $77 billion
annually for environmental
improvements and that cost could easily
reach $100 billion by the end of the
century. Rather than ask where the next
billion dollars can be spent, we must
pause and again ask how clean and how
fast? Today we have infinitely more
scientific capability and sophisticated
cost-benefit analysis to steer a course
toward a cleaner environment. The
question is, will our elected officials
and executive branch regulators be
willing to lean into the political winds,
as we did, and act on the basis of
objective information? Q
(Whitaker was President Nixon's
Cabinet Secretary (5969); associate
director of the White House Domestic
Council for environment, energy, and
natural resources policy (1969-1972):
and Undersecretary of the Department
of the Interior (1973-1975). He is now
Vice President, Public A/fairs, for Union
Camp Corporation.)
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