Earth Day is officially on April 22 every year. Its founder, US Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, chose a spring date when students are still on campus, as he recognized that education and youth would be central to the cause of spreading knowledge and respect of nature’s role on earth and in human lives.
Over 30 years later, I met Senator Nelson in his 80’s at a conference, where he was sitting at a table selling and autographing copies of his 2002 book Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise. There was no line (I had snuck out of a slow speech) and I had time for a nice chat with him after buying 2 copies.
Looking back to that encounter reminds me of hearing another environmental hero, Franklin Kury, also then in his 80’s, speak at West Chester University in April, 2019, during what by then had expanded to Earth Week. As a young state representative, in 1971 Kury was instrumental in getting Pennsylvania’s General Assembly to add an Environmental Rights Amendment to the state Constitution (art. 1, section 27; ratified by voters with a 4 to 1 margin in 1971).
His far-reaching measure reads:
The people have a right to clean air, pure water, and to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania’s public natural resources are the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit of all the people.
Kury too went on to write a book about it, The Constitutional Question to Save the Planet: The Peoples’ Right to a Healthy Environment, in which he called for the US constitution to include a national environmental rights amendment.
For a long time courts treated the Pennsylvania amendment as well-meaning words without legal impact, but in 2013 environmental lawyer Maya Van Rossum and colleagues won a monumental victory when the PA Supreme Court invalidated most of Act 13, a highly destructive law written by the fracking industry.
You can read about it in her 2017 book The Green Amendment, Securing Our Right to a Healthy Environment (now in a 2nd edition). Van Rossum, like Kury, is urging the US to pass a Green Amendment (her own term) and she is working at it state by state.
So this year marks the 54th Earth Day (image: one of the official posters), which long ago became insitutionalized, like MLK Day, into our national life. This year’s overall theme is Planet vs. Plastics. You might wonder, why plastics and not, say, climate change or ecological destruction? The answer is: such issues are all connected.
The fossil fuel industry, seeing the rise (albeit too slowly) of alternative energy and electric vehicles, has long been promoting the use of plastic, a fossil fuel product. Thus plastics, as much as gas heating and gas-powered cars, are responsible for the climate crisis. In addition, the ubiquitous throw-away plastic bag (see the Chester County effort to ban such bags here) fouls our neighborhoods, roads, waterways and shores and kills vulnerable wildlife like water birds and dolphins. A recent study shows that bottled water contains hundreds of thousands of nanoplastic particles per liter. In fact, we continuously eat, drink and inhale a lot of tiny plastic particles. Is plastic responsible for the alarming rise in autoimmune and other chronic diseases?
As in so much else, buyer beware! The corporate culture that once said smoking was safe and told western PA residents that fracking produced no adverse effects on the environment now say bottled water is perfectly safe. Unfortunately, we all have a lot of work to do just to defend ourselves and our environment. Earth Day is a good time for that. Tomorrow, Saturday April 20, you can check out:
• A great quantity of activities from 12-4pm in Reservoir Park, 601 Franklin Ave, Phoenixville, PA 19460 (more info here).
• A rally, march, informational tabling, and dinner from 3-7pm in downtown West Chester (more info here).
For other Earth activities of the season in Chester County, see the calendar here. And wherever you may be, have a great Earth Week!
politicswestchesterview 
Excellent summary on the birth of Earth Day and of Green rights. It started out bipartisan, was politicized and vilified and now is becoming more mainstream once again. A reason to celebrate, Join the WC Green Team at the Courthouse, 2 N High St, for a rally tomorrow. Politicians, a musician, a Lenape blessing and 2 11 year olds will grace the event. All are welcome!