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Happy Earth Day, 2023

Were any of you at Earth Day 1970?

“Today is Earth Day, celebrated for the first time in 1970. Coming the same week that House Republicans demanded that Congress rescind the money Democrats appropriated in the Inflation Reduction Act to address climate change, Earth Day in 2023 is a poignant reminder of an earlier era, one in which Americans recognized a crisis that transcended partisanship and came together to fix it.

The spark for the first Earth Day was the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. A marine biologist and best-selling author, Carson showed the devastating effects of people on nature by documenting the effect of modern pesticides on the natural world. She focused on the popular pesticide DDT, which had been developed in 1939 and used to clear islands in the South Pacific of malaria-carrying mosquitoes during World War II. Deployed as an insect killer in the U.S. after the war, DDT was poisoning the natural food chain in American waters.

DDT sprayed on vegetation washed into the oceans. It concentrated in fish, which were then eaten by birds of prey, especially ospreys. The DDT caused the birds to lay eggs with abnormally thin eggshells, so thin the eggs cracked in the nest when the parent birds tried to incubate them. And so the birds began to die off.

Carson was unable to interest any publishing company in the story of DDT. Finally, frustrated at the popular lack of interest in the reasons for the devastation of birds, she decided to write the story anyway, turning out a highly readable book with 55 pages of footnotes to make her case.

When The New Yorker began to serialize Carson’s book in June 1962, chemical company leaders were scathing. “If man were to faithfully follow the teachings of Miss Carson," an executive of the American Cyanamid Company said, "we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases and vermin would once again inherit the earth." Officers of Monsanto questioned Carson's sanity.

But her portrait of the dangerous overuse of chemicals and their effect on living organisms caught readers’ attention. They were willing to listen. Carson’s book sold more than half a million copies in 24 countries.

Democratic president John F. Kennedy asked the President’s Science Advisory Committee to look into Carson’s argument, and the committee vindicated her. Before she died of breast cancer in 1964, Carson noted: "Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we have now acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself? [We are] challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves."

Meanwhile, a number of scientists followed up on Carson’s argument and in 1967 organized the Environmental Defense Fund to protect the environment by lobbying for a ban on DDT. As they worked, Americans began to pay closer attention to human effects on the environment, especially after three crucial moments: First, on December 24, 1968, William Anders took a color picture of the Earth rising over the horizon of the moon from outer space during the Apollo 8 mission, powerfully illustrating the beauty and isolation of the globe on which we all live.

Then, over 10 days in January–February 1969, a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, poured between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels of oil into the Pacific, fouling 35 miles of California beaches and killing seabirds, dolphins, sea lions, and elephant seals. Public outrage ran so high that President Nixon himself, a Republican, went to Santa Barbara in March to see the cleanup efforts, telling the American public that “the Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

And then, in June 1969, the chemical contaminants that had been dumped into Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught fire. A dumping ground for local heavy industry, the river had actually burned more than ten times in the previous century, but with increased focus on environmental damage, this time the burning river garnered national attention.

In February 1970, President Richard M. Nixon sent to Congress a special message “on environmental quality.” “[W]e…have too casually and too long abused our natural environment,” he wrote. “The time has come when we can wait no longer to repair the damage already done, and to establish new criteria to guide us in the future.”

“The tasks that need doing require money, resolve and ingenuity,” Nixon said, “and they are too big to be done by government alone. They call for fundamentally new philosophies of land, air and water use, for stricter regulation, for expanded government action, for greater citizen involvement, and for new programs to ensure that government, industry and individuals all are called on to do their share of the job and to pay their share of the cost.”

Nixon called for a 37-point program with 23 legislative proposals and 14 new administrative measures to control water and air pollution, manage solid waste, protect parklands and public recreation, and organize for action. “As we deepen our understanding of complex ecological processes, as we improve our technologies and institutions and learn from experience, much more will be possible,” he said. “But these 37 measures represent actions we can take now, and that can move us dramatically forward toward what has become an urgent common goal of all Americans: the rescue of our natural habitat as a place both habitable and hospitable to man.”

Meanwhile, Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin, visited the Santa Barbara oil spill and hoped to turn the same sort of enthusiasm people were bringing to protests against the Vietnam War to efforts to protect the environment. He announced a teach-in on college campuses, which soon grew into a wider movement across the country. Their “Earth Day,” held on April 22, 1970, brought more than 20 million Americans—10% of the total population of the country at the time—to call for the nation to address the damage caused by 150 years of unregulated industrial development. The movement included members of all political parties, rich Americans and their poorer neighbors, people who lived in the city and those in the country, labor leaders and their employers. It is still one of the largest protests in American history.

In July, at the advice of a council convened to figure out how to consolidate government programs to combat pollution, Nixon proposed to Congress a new agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, which Congress created in 1970. This new agency assumed responsibility for the federal regulation of pesticides, and after the Environmental Defense Fund filed suit, in June 1972 the EPA banned DDT. Four months later, Congress passed the Clean Water Act, establishing protections for water quality and regulating pollutant discharges into waters of the United States.

Today, even as Republicans are attacking the EPA by suggesting that Congress cannot delegate major regulatory powers to it, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to promote environmental justice. In the past generation we have come to understand that pollution hits minority and poor populations far harder than it does wealthy white communities: the government and private companies target Indigenous reservations for the storage of nuclear waste, for example, because the reservations are not covered by the same environmental and health standards as the rest of the country.

Today, Biden said, “To fulfill our Nation’s promises of justice, liberty, and equality, every person must have clean air to breathe; clean water to drink; safe and healthy foods to eat; and an environment that is healthy, sustainable, climate-resilient, and free from harmful pollution and chemical exposure. Restoring and protecting a healthy environment—wherever people live, play, work, learn, grow, and worship—is a matter of justice and a fundamental duty that the Federal Government must uphold on behalf of all people.”

Amen.

Happy Earth Day 2023.

[Earthrise, taken on December 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders, NASA, Public Domain, gathered from Wikipedia]



Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/20/house-gop-debt-limit-plan-inflation-reduction-act-00092891

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/story-silent-spring

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-environmental-quality

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/remarks-following-inspection-oil-damage-santa-barbara-beach

https://www.epa.gov/history/origins-epa

https://www.earthday.org/history/

https://www.epa.gov/archive/epa/aboutepa/ddt-regulatory-history-brief-survey-1975.html

https://www.nps.gov/articles/story-of-the-fire.htm.

https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/discover-history-clean-water-act

https://nelsonearthday.net/gaylord-nelson-earth-day-origins/

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/21/executive-order-on-revitalizing-our-nations-commitment-to-environmental-justice-for-all/

And, there you have it… Happy Earth Day”
 
It was at exactly that time that the evidence of DDT was proven to be affecting the eggshells of Bermuda's slowly recovering endemic seabird the 'Cahow', a species of shearwater.
Cahows were extirpated on the mainland of Bermuda by 1620 as they were unafraid of humans, ground burrowing and an easy source of meat form the first settlers.
They were thought to be extinct until a remanant population was rediscovered on tiny isolated offshore islets in 1951.
One of my teachers and mentors David Wingate went on to champion the breeding programme and things were going well until the magnification of DDT in the food chain was causing the one egg per year of the seven breeding pairs to break when brooded. That was in the 70's.
The plight of the Cahow became part of the movement to ban DDT. Once it was banned, the Cahow continued to make a slow recovery.
I worked on the Project in the 80's for a short time, helping build and monitor nest sites, and then in later years one of my classmates Jeremy Madeiros became the head Conservation Officer and, furthering the work of David Wingate, the Cahow continues to go from strength to strength.
There is a 'Cahow cam' set up every breeding season and can be seen on the Nonsuch Expeditions website.

Environmental regulation is crucial, open slather to pollute for the almighty dollar is shameful.
 
That was what made the White taled Eagle almost extinct here.
DDT and Mercury in the fish.
In late 80es someone came up with a brilliant idea.
Feed the few remaining pairs ( 4) something else, to detoxify them.
What do we have plenty of in Denmark?
Dead pigs!!!!!!!!!!!!
With 23 million hogs in a country with 6 million people, dead pigs are more than plentyful.
So they set up feeding stations at the nesting sites and the lazy Eagles stopped fishing and gorged themselves on dead pigs instead.

Major success!!!!!!!!!!!
Today we have 152 nesting pairs, and last year they brought 153 young ones on the wing.
The dead pigs programme has long ago come to an end, today the Eagles feed themselves.

I am working along a beach right now, setting 8½ km electric fence.
There is a nest, so we have the Eagles flying over us every day.:)
 
We used to have frogs galore in our creeks and pond. In the 70s they slowly dwindled. I theorized that the herbicide Atrazine was at fault. Decades later one scientist researched the problem and yes, it was Atrazine. It acts as a hormone and turns the males into he/shes. Better living through chemistry.
 
Aside from the fact that dumbass will turn up somewhere else, he's just scapegoat to deflect attention. He didn't do anything on tv his masters didn't want him to do.
 
You want to post a link to the article that says he was fired? Everything I read was stating parted ways not specifying why or whom might have made the move or decision.
Dan Bongino failed to negotiate a contract with Fox recent. Sounded more like, "we can't come to a contractual agreement."
Meanwhile, CNN did fire Don Lemon.
Supposably after they asked for a meeting and he tweeting something something instead (Using Dave's lingo). Then claimed they should have called a meeting :lol:
 
It would be nice if the reporters believed the stories they were telling.
Calling him a reporter is kinda pissing on reporters.

He would have been run out of town on a rail, tarred and fethered in Denmark.

( Just trying to sound like Scott here) basically he would have been laughed out of town.
How anybody could take that idiot seriously is beyond me.

But I guess the orange eyed Trumpistas lapped his drivel up.
 
We used to have frogs galore in our creeks and pond. In the 70s they slowly dwindled. I theorized that the herbicide Atrazine was at fault. Decades later one scientist researched the problem and yes, it was Atrazine. It acts as a hormone and turns the males into he/shes. Better living through chemistry.
Yep, same in Bermuda.
The cane toads started showing up with extra eyes and legs or missing bits completely. An aquaintance of mine Dr. Jamie Bacon started to research it. Atrazine was one culprit, as it was extensively used in the landscape industry in 'weed and feed' formulations; and diesel contaminants from road run off and the fact that wetlands back in the day were used as dumpsite for literally everything.
Even in the restored wetlands, the mud at the bottom was contaminated with atrazine, diesel runoff and heavy metals.
Another culprit was the wetting agent in some formulations of Roundup
She used to travel about giving lectures with a live toad with a leg growing out of its head.
 
The "weed and feed" formulation is an enviromental disaster that I think should be outlawed. Dandelions in your lawn? So what!!

It's hard to comprehend, but there are more herbicides used on lawns than used on crop fields. Wonder how Monsanto is doing with all the lawsuits?
 
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