Fifty years ago today I was living in San Jose with my young wife, Linda, and our seven-month-old daughter, Molly. We had recently relocated from Southern California. I had seemingly beat the Draft as the war in Vietnam raged on. However, the tumult of the Sixties -- political assassinations and unruly protests in the streets -- had settled down for us.
We had sold Linda's 8-cylinder, gas-guzzling Mustang and purchased the only new car I have ever owned: a forest-green, 4-cylinder Volkswagen Bug. I slapped an "Ecology Now" decal on the back window, a political statement I felt proud to flaunt of our environmental awareness.
We were young and idealistic, naive, newly arrived adults, creatures of our culture.
What was "ecology," anyway? The obscure biological term had suddenly sprouted into the lexicon of the new decade.
With the announcement of the first Earth Day exactly a half-century ago, words like ecology and phrases like "Save the Planet" and "Save the Whales" hit the mainstream with minor support and ridicule. Many rolled their eyes and mocked these phrases.
Wasn't every day Earth Day? Wasn't that a ridiculous redundancy? Save a whale? Are you kidding me?
I remember turning my eyes toward the rolling foothills east of San Jose only to see a brown haze in the sky. The hills were barely visible through the polluted air that had blown south from Oakland and San Francisco along the bay and settled in sprawling Santa Clara Valley like an ugly, long-tentacled monster.
Look around that valley today and the air quality is much improved. Getting off leaded gas has made a huge difference. When we visit relatives in Southern California, I am amazed by the clarity of the air. Clear across the L.A. basin, I can see majestic Mount Baldy and the San Gabriel Range from Manhattan Beach.
The metaphor of a lot of water passing under the bridge seems appropriate for all that has transpired over the past 50 years. I look around. Those of us who remain can rightly call ourselves survivors.
We have tamed smog. We are recycling materials. We are repurposing bags and using less plastic. We are driving electric cars. Restaurants serve sustainable foods. Small organic farms have proliferated. Community farmers' markets attract shoppers.
Fifty years later let's take this Earth Day moment while we shelter in-place to consider what we would like to see tomorrow and what we can do to get there. It's our opportunity, for our children and their children. What about a Green New Deal?
Happy Earth Day to the entire world!
Is he kidding? No, I'm not.
Another great share, Kevin. It was the following year that I first met you at the Merc-News. I was a copy boy and you were a PR/Promotion copy writer. I first noticed you when you were leading a tour through the newsroom. I was trimming copy over in the wire room for the copy desk. It was shortly after that that I got promoted to the PR Dept. and first met you. Within about a year or so, we both quit and walked out the door together... We had had enough of Joe Ridder's bullshit. I was going to SJSU at the time, finishing my journalism major and taking a bunch of Environmental Studies classes from Don Aiken, a leader in the environmental movement. Yes, Earth Day is a very special day coming the day after my hero, John Muir's birthday. He inspired me to "see' nature in a new light. You have always inspired me, too...
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