Archive Gallery: The Birth of Environmentalism
On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, we take a look back at where it all began The year 1970 was a pivotal one for the modern environmental movement: on April 22, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson founded Earth Day, which quickly grew from a grassroots demonstration into the week-long celebration that we partake in to this day. And on December 2, President Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to respond to the growing demand for green legislation and environmental oversight. We shouldn't be surprised, then, at the influx of environment and pollution-related articles recorded in our archives during the early 1970s. Prior to that decade, keyword searches for typical green terms turn up only a smattering of results. In 1932, we briefly mentioned that fumes from factory chimneys in Germany may be damaging farmers' crops. Dangerous chemicals were described simply as "foreign vapors in the atmosphere." In June 1955, we...