Making the 40th Earth Day More Like the First

Bill McKibben is part of Change.org's Changemakers network, comprised of leading voices for social change.

In the few years after the first Earth Day, Congress passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. And that was with a Republican president. The question is, are we doing anything on this 40th anniversary to set ourselves up for a repeat?

And the answer, I fear, is no. True, the Senate is about to consider a global warming bill, but so weak that it's won praise for its reasonableness from Bjorn Lomborg, the most effective opponent of action on global warming. Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, who sat down with the electric utilities to write the bill, explained quite candidly that it no longer even has an environmental goal. "I'm all for saving the planet, but this is an energy independence bill." Why did it work so well then, and so badly now?

The answer, I think, is we'd done a better job of mobilizing people politically back then. In 1970 people didn't just come to a festival — they went out in the next few months and defeated a half dozen key Congressmen who were voting the wrong way on the environment. We've got to show the same kind of commitment now. Which is why on October 10 (10/10/10), 350.org is holding a Global Work Party. Some of the work will be quite practical — in thousands of communities they will be putting up solar panels or digging new community gardens. But it will all come with a pointed political message: We're getting to work, why aren't you? If we can build wind turbines, you can build legislation; if we can hammer in solar panels, you can hammer out laws. And it will come with an implied threat, too, one worth delivering right before Election Day: if you can't be bothered, then you can't be a Senator any more.

Earth Day can't be apolitical fun — not until we've really won something to celebrate.

Photo credit: Nancie Battaglia