I still have mixed feelings about Earth Day.
In 1970, I was in seventh grade, having already been suspended and about to be expelled for political activity—which was largely, but not entirely, in opposition to the raging war in Southeast Asia. I’d seen the Life magazine pictures of the massacred old people, women, and kids in the ditches of My Lai.
This Earth Day idea—that we all needed to take personal responsibility to do something about pollution—seemed like a clever political diversion.
The school administration decided it would be instructive to have us pick up litter on a hot North Carolina roadside. We had some classroom discussion afterward. I suggested most pollution was coming from factories, and that big business was responsible. It didn’t go over well with the teacher.
I hadn’t seen, until today, that on that first Earth Day the great I.F. Stone was making some related good points in a speech at the Washington Monument.
Forty-five years later, I think a lot of the participation in the environmental movement comes from a perspective of doing your part, taking individual responsibility, and feeling good about it. With age, I’ve come to be more tolerant of that perspective. However, I still think it is a diversion from the pressing need for political action to challenge the military-industrial complex.
