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An Observance of the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day
Today, April 22, 2020, is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. It was started in California as the result of the infamous oil spill at Unocal platforms off the coast of Santa Barbara in 1969. Many of us Californians, including this author, were deeply offended by the cavalier approach that Big Oil — -Texaco, Humble, Unocal, Mobil, and Shell (THUMS for short) — -took toward California’s environment. Their view, put simply, was that nature, in general, and California in particular, were meant to be exploited for the sake of profit.
I was a senior in high school in 1970 and had been actively involved in pro-environmental causes since 1966, so I had a pretty good idea of what was at stake if THUMS was allowed to continue its environmental predation without any active resistance from the people who had to live with the consequences of drilling.
As a result, I organized a group of my school mates and formed “Earth Action Now,” a student-activist body which promoted environmental protection and sought environmental justice. We initiated a wave of Earth Day celebrations in our high school in Los Angeles and throughout the state of California.
