I’m pretty bad at hand lettering but I tried my very best to make a beautiful poster in the spring of 1970. I wrote ‘GIVE EARTH A CHANCE’ or something like that. I don’t quite remember.
I joined my classmates at Amery Elementary School in rural Wisconsin as we marched around the school grounds chanting pro-Earth slogans. It was fun to get out of class for a bit. We all had a touch of spring fever.
It was Earth Day. 22 April 1970. I was just one of 20 million Americans who marched on that day. Yes, 20 million … that was 10% of the population of the United States of America. Imagine that.
A lot of people were concerned about the environment then. Species of plants and animals were becoming extinct, toxins were being applied on agricultural lands, the human population was growing exponentially, factories were emitting poisons and rubbish into the air and waterways, oil was spilling onto pristine beaches. Things got so bad that a river caught on fire. Pretty serious stuff.
So, Gaylord Nelson, a US Senator who lived six miles down the road from me in little Clear Lake, Wisconsin, proposed a nationwide teach-in to raise awareness about these serious environmental issues. But teach-ins were becoming less effective at the time and were a bit over used by anti-Vietnam war activities. So a team working with Senator Nelson declared that 22 April 1970 would become the first Earth Day. That marketing twist worked and on Earth Day one out of every 10 Americans went out on the streets demanding that we save ourselves. If I were better at hand lettering, I might have written a poster which said ‘We have met the enemy and he is us’. Pogo said that. It was the theme of the day.
And I believed in that slogan during my formative years in the 1970s. Earth Day made it abundantly clear to me that we have a responsibility to be good stewards of Mother Earth. But we were failing. I went off to university in the mid-70s to learn how I could do my part to ensure Mother Earth’s survival.
It was encouraging in those days. President Richard Nixon wasn’t personally passionate about the environment movement, but he listened to the plea of the people. He and subsequently President Jimmy Carter both thought that the way to make America great again was to first make Earth great. The Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act Amendments, Endangered Species Act, establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), protection of millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness, introduction of catalytic converters in cars to reduce emissions. It was a pivotal decade when we even saw solar panels on the White House. The environmental movement was on a roll, and I was feeling optimistic.
But it didn’t last. In the 1980 US elections the environmental movement’s super heros Jimmy Carter and Gaylord Nelson lost out and the momentum just seemed to instantly abate. It was the beginning of the Me Generation. There was a huge cultural shift to a focus on self-improvement and materialistic values. Giving Earth a Chance was no longer a priority.
The movement and concern never fully died. Presidents Clinton, Obama and Biden recognised the importance of environmental stewardship.
Fast forward to 2025. It’s been 55 years since I marched in that first Earth Day. And I have never been so concerned and frightened for our Planet Earth as I am now.
Within hours of taking office Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord. The crowd in the arena cheered.
The Paris Climate Accord is perhaps the single most important act that inhabitants of Planet Earth have agreed upon together … an act which, despite its flaws, might actually give Earth a Chance. President Trump signed the order with a flourish of his Sharpie and stated ‘That’ll save us one trillion dollars’.
I recognise that those people cheering President Trump on were less concerned about the environment and more concerned about making ends meet financially. That’s fair enough. But what is fair as well is to tell the truth about the economic benefits of environmental stewardship.
Indeed, it will take some initial investment to reduce carbon emissions, but the payoffs won’t be far off.
A study by Resources for the Future estimates that limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C could yield approximately $605 trillion in present-value benefits through 2300, equating to about $6.8 trillion per year, or 2% of projected global GDP during that period.
Lifting regulations to promote fossil fuel development will no doubt have some economic benefits for the next four years. Gasoline might be a bit cheaper for a while … and then what?
When President Trump signed that executive order and others to reduce incentives for the development of wind energy and electric vehicles, he didn’t make it clear that by bringing America back to the fossil fuel era of the mid-1900s, he is leading American manufacturers to an era of being less competitive globally.
The rest of the world is going green. No executive order is going to stop that. There is a global race to own green energy technologies … and reap extraordinary profit. The Chinese will leave the fossil-fuel based American auto industry in the dust, particularly with the halting of EV incentives. President Joe Biden created those incentives to make the US auto industry more globally competitive.
Wind energy. Solar energy. Green energy in every shape and form. President Trump just gave non-US manufacturers a gift.
That loss of competitiveness alone will COST the US trillions in the years ahead.
It’s a pity though we even must justify environmental stewardship with economic benefits. When I painted that sign in 1970 those concepts about economic benefits were all too deep for me. I just wanted to breathe fresh air and drink clean water and hike in national parks and make sure the plants and animals didn’t become extinct.
It’s time though that I practice my poster drawing skills. This time I’ll make a poster which says Make Earth Great Again (MEGA). I think that will hit a chord.
[Photo credit: AI’s best effort at re-creating the memories in my brain]