On this day, October 4 in 1969, an American activist and journalist, Roger Caras, laid it out for people at a leadership conference of the American Humane Society.
“Our population is insane in its rate of growth. This was pointed out to you yesterday. I’m sure you all know it. Our air is unbreathable. Lake Erie is gone. We are told that the oceans can be gone within 10 years. There will be no fish out of the sea to eat. Our soil is disappearing. The pollutants in the air are creating a greenhouse effect. I stood at the South Pole a few years ago. The snow is 9600 feet deep; there are 6 million square miles of it. If we melt it, our problems are solved because all of the ports of the world would vanish and the ocean will rise 200 feet.”
Caras, R. (1969). The humane movement and the survival of all living things. In C. Burke (Ed.), The Power of Positive Programs in the American Humane Movement: discussion papers of the National Leadership Conference of The Humane Society of the United States: October 3-5, 1969, Hershey, PA (pp. 89-94). [could be 5th October]
https://www.wellbeingintlstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=acwp_wmm
[The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 321.78ppm. At time of writing it was 421ishppm- but for what it is now, well, see here for the latest.]
The context was this – People had begun to worry over the past 10 years about the impact of rapid industrialisation. In 1962 Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring had been published and since that time more and more activist and scientific work had been done on air pollution in cities especially Los Angeles. A couple of months before this presentation the idea for a a 1-day teaching called “Earth day” had been put forward
Why this matters.
In and of itself it doesn’t but as with everything in this site if you know your history you will know where you’re coming from and you will not be taken in by the idea that this is a new problem and that we need further time to study it
What happened next?
A few months after this speech Earth Day happened millions of Americans participating either in protests or Teach-ins. There was a general sense of optimism or possibility that the worst of the problems could be dealt with. They weren’t.