[Earth Day has been around for more than 50 years, but it’s more important than ever here in 2026. So for this year’s commemorations I’ll AmericanStudy a handful of the folks who helped create & popularize the holiday, leading up to a special weekend tribute to the work of two of our most impressive young environmental activists!]
On two parallel 1969-70 moments and their aftermaths, and the lessons we can learn from them.
In the immediate aftermath of the horrific 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill (about which see yesterday’s post), the young California Congressman Pete McCloskey reached out to the even younger (but clearly already prominent) San Francisco environmental lawyer Marc McGinnes, asking McGinnes to assist in the community response to the spill. The experience changed everything for McGinnes, who in 1970 co-founded and became president of the Community Environmental Council (a nationwide think tank) and in 1971 joined the faculty at Rod Nash’s new Environmental Studies Program at UCSB (for more on which, again, see yesterday’s post). He has continued to be closely connected to both of those organizations to this day, and likewise has remained a pivotal figure in the story of Earth Day, which evolved directly out of the January 1970 Environmental Rights Day conference in Santa Barbara that McGinnes chaired.
In the aftermath of that January 1970 conference, the legendary Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson reached out to the young Wisconsin-born activist Denis Hayes (then a student at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government), asking Hayes to organize the first Earth Day celebrations that would take place in April of that year. The experience changing everything for Hayes, who left Harvard and became a national and global ambassador for Earth Day and all it represents: helping make that first 1970 celebration the iconic success it was, with an estimate of 20 million demonstrators taking part; and founding the Earth Day Network to ensure that the commemorations would become the annual global occasion that they remain to this day. He has remained closely connected with that organization and occasion, but has also served in a number of influential political positions, including as President Carter’s head of the Solar Energy Research Institute (which became the National Renewable Energy Laboratory until the Trump administration took “renewable” out last year) and as the longtime president and CEO (since 1992) of the environmental lobbyist organization the Bullitt Foundation.
One clear and important lesson of these interestingly parallel stories is that real, enduring change requires the contributions of both political and activist figures. Sometimes the politicians have to just get the ball rolling (as McCloskey did in reaching out to McGinnes), while sometimes they have to play a more sustained role (as Nelson did with the first Earth Day, in conjunction with folks like Hayes), but in any case solidarity between these communities goes a long way toward meaningful action. There’s another lesson here too, though, and it’s one more individually focused on McGinnes and Hayes. Both of them were young men who were already on impressive educational, professional, and personal trajectories, and yet both immediately shifted when called upon and then doubled down when they realized both the importance of the occasion and what they could contribute to the ongoing work. There are all kinds of courage, but to me the arcs of these two men certainly qualify—and remind us of what courageous actions can produce for our communities and world.
Next Earth Day figure tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you think?
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