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Students paddling rafts on Milwaukee River

Remember When Earth Day Used to Be Cool?

Today, the holiday is just a chance for ExxonMobil to release nonsensical ad campaigns. But once upon a time, it was a radical success story.
by Liza Featherstone via The New Republic on April 21, 2022

How an Oil Spill 50 Years Ago Inspired the First Earth Day

Before Earth Day made a name for the environmental movement, a massive oil spill put a spotlight on the dangers of pollution.
by Lila Thulin via Smithsonian on April 22, 2019

Organizing for Change: The Genius of the First Earth Day

What we can learn from the successes of local activists in 1970.
by Adam Rome via Process: A Blog for American History on April 21, 2017

Informed Archives: The Environmental Action Coalition and the Birth of Earth Day

January 2017's Women's March wasn't the first time Fifth Avenue in New York City hosted an enormous demonstration.
by Meredith Mann via New York Public Library on April 20, 2017
Photograph of two of the original organizers preparing for the first Earth Day (1970). At left, a woman holds up two advertisements for the event. In front, a man stares into the camera (Denis Hayes) while holding a phone.

The Fate of Earth Day

What has gone wrong with the modern environmental movement and its political organizing.
by Nicholas Lemann via The New Yorker on April 8, 2013
Nixon outdoors making his famous double-v hand gesture.

Nixon Was the Weirdest Environmentalist

Richard Nixon helped establish Earth Day and poured millions of dollars into conservation, despite his own ambivalence about the environmental movement.
by Liza Featherstone via The New Republic on April 20, 2023
Greenpeace demonstrators opposing drilling.
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Liberal Activists Have to Think Broadly and Unite Across Lines

The forgotten environmental action that pointed the path forward for the left.
by Matthew D. Lassiter via Made By History on March 11, 2020
A surfer carries his oil-coated board.

‘The Ocean Is Boiling’: The Complete Oral History of the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill

How the disaster energized the nascent environmental movement and led to a slew of legislative changes.
by Kate Wheeling, Max Ufberg via Pacific Standard on April 18, 2017
The recycling symbol.

How the Recycling Symbol Got America Addicted to Plastic

Corporations sold Americans on the chasing arrows — while stripping the logo of its worth.
by Kate Yoder via Grist on June 12, 2024
Richard and Pat Nixon plant a tree on the White House lawn on Earth Day, 1970.

The “Carbon Dioxide Problem”: Nixon’s Inner Circle Debates the Climate Crisis

A collection of records from the Nixon Presidential Library and other sources on the internal debates Nixon advisors were having about climate change and environment.
by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry Kissinger, Hubert Heffner, U. Alexis Johnson, Rachel Santarsiero via National Security Archive on April 26, 2024
San Diego Postcard.

San Diego—A Green(Er) City: Six Decades Of Environmental Activism In A Biodiversity Hotspot

San Diego's city-wide mission to promote sustainability, combat climate change, and reduce environmental health disparities.
by Andrew Wiese via The Metropole on February 13, 2024
Old-time black and white pictures of Theodore Roosevelt and John Muir with a modern city background

How American Environmentalism Failed

Traditional environmentalism has lacked a meaningful, practical democratic vision, rendering it largely marginal to the day-to-day lives of most Americans.
by William Shutkin via The MIT Press Reader on August 31, 2021
Young Lords Party march to the UN.

The Young Lords' Radical Fight for Environmental Justice

Johanna Fernández's new book on the Young Lords sheds light on the group's fight for clean streets and public health in 1960s New York City.
by Erik Wallenberg via Edge Effects on July 29, 2021
Image of the front cover of "The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump."

Conservatives Before and After Earth Day

As Republicans denounce climate change as a “hoax” and dismantle the environmental regulatory state they worked to build, we are left to wonder: What happened?
by James Morton Turner, Andrew C. Isenberg via Harvard University Press Blog on April 22, 2019

A First Glimpse of Our Magnificent Earth, Seen From the Moon

The first people to view our planet from the moon were transformed by the experience. In this film, they tell their story.
by Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee via New York Times Op-Docs on October 2, 2018

Three Eras of Environmental Concern

In the late 19th and early 20th century, talk about “the environment” had little of its later coherence or political meaning.
by Christopher Sellers via Modern American History on July 27, 2018

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