Summary
On April the 22 1970, 20 million Americans came out on to the streets to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in the first so-called Earth Day. Mass rallies were held to highlight concerns about pollution and the destruction of America's natural heritage. Some see it as the birth of the modern environmental movement. Farhana Haider spoke to Denis Hayes, the organiser of that first Earth Day.
Photo credit: Robert Sabo-Pool/Getty Images
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
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| 0:35.4 | Sounds. |
| 0:36.4 | Hello and thank you for downloading this edition of the Witness Podcast. |
| 0:39.9 | History is told by the people who are there. |
| 0:42.4 | I'm Frahana Hiveriber and today I'm taking you back to April |
| 0:45.8 | the 22nd, 1970. |
| 0:47.8 | When an estimated 20 million Americans came out onto the streets to demonstrate for a healthy sustainable environment in the first Earth Day. enthusiastic demonstrations in New York City today for example. |
| 1:13.1 | The trash, the carbon monoxide, who suffers most from it if it is not the poor? |
| 1:24.0 | This administration is being utterly hypocritical in its attempts to deal with environmental pollution, obviously. |
| 1:31.0 | It was a fun day for many school-age youngsters participating in their very first |
| 1:36.1 | demonstration. Thousands of colleges, universities and schools organized protests against |
| 1:41.8 | the deterioration of the environment. |
| 1:43.7 | I've been speaking to the organizer of that first Earth Day, Dennis Hayes. |
| 1:48.3 | Earth Day was almost certainly the largest planned and organized event in American history, and it catapulted this set of diverse issues |
| 1:56.3 | under the political agenda, so that legislation that in 1969 was literally unthinkable, became unstoppable in 1970. |
| 2:07.0 | The idea for a national day to focus on the environment |
| 2:11.0 | was the brainchild of a senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson. on the Senator Nelson thought that he could harness that energy to tackle environmental causes, |
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