The Weekender: Rare Video Footage from Original Earth Day (and the surprising truth it reveals)

Image credit: New York Times Dot Earth blog

The Weekender features a longer form article (or podcast like this week) from a reputable source. We select articles that discuss issues and opportunities we deem just off the radar for many business people, students, and faculty. We aim to expand the mind, broaden the heart, and sharpen the analysis. Have a great weekend.

This week....

Tomorrow is Earth Day, a U.S. holiday that has been popularized around the world. Sustainability wasn't born on Earth Day but this seminal event in 1970 was a milestone in the evolution of human thought around our dependence on ecosystems, along with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and the UN Biosphere Conference. Check out this interactive 1960 - 2004 World Watch timeline. What we can see: the focus was never just the environment. Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, was equally emphatic about poverty, affordable housing, urban blight and other issues of income and health inequality.

So this weekend, we travel back in time to revisit Nelson's 1970 speech.

"Ecology is a big science, a big concept- -not a copout. It is concerned with the total eco-system--not just with how we dispose of our tin cans, bottles and sewage.

Environment is all of America and its problems. It is rats in the ghetto. It is a hungry child in a land of affluence. It is housing that is not worthy of the name; neighborhoods not fit to inhabit."

Watch Senator Gaylord Nelson original Earth Day 1970 speech