Tomorrow is Earth Day. All around the state, communities and organizations have special events planned. For example, residents can take part in a nature hunt in Raymond, a “Love your dump day†in Salisbury, and a road walk at Rivier College. But how much do people care about the one day we put aside every year to honor the environment? New Hampshire Public Radio’s Rebecca Kaufman talked to some long time environmentalists in the state. She asked them how Earth Day and the movement that created the day have changed over the last 30 years.
Today, Sharon Francis lives in Charlestown and serves as the executive director of the Connecticut River Joint Commissions.
Her environmental resume goes way back to the days when the movement was just starting to take root in the United States.
In the 70s and 80s Francis worked at the Environmental Protection Agency.
And in the 60s, she held the chief environmental policy position in the Johnson Administration.
Francis remembers well the very first Earth Day in 1970.
"In Washington there was, oh I don’t know how many but hundreds of thousands of people on the mall and a great many of speeches and great deal of to-do, a lot of Earth Day happened in schools and local communities all over the country and it was well thought out and well organized for well over a year, every local news outlet could find a story right in their own backyard or front yard."
Thirty six years later, most local news outlets don’t have to look too hard to find an Earth Day story.
But it’s pretty safe to say hundreds of thousands of people won’t spend their Saturday afternoon on the Washington mall.
Francis says Earth Day might not hold the same fervor it once did.
But she adds that that doesn’t mean people have lost their passion for environmental causes.
"My work in the Connecticut River Valley says to me that people are excited, they are committed, and they care as much and do as much as they ever did, but it’s a mature movement now, it’s not the gee whiz fire cracker movement it once was in its earliest days."
And a very unscientific survey of shoppers at a mall in Concord this week found that, indeed, Earth Day is not a big deal.
Even those who claim to be environmentalists do not have big earth day plans.
VOX
Marcy Lyman thinks more people need to consider every day earth day.
Lyman is currently with the Quebec Labrador Foundation Atlantic Center for the Environment.
She’s been in New Hampshire since 1979 working on a wide range of environmental issues.
"I guess where I see where we are now, there is still energy and activity and good work taking place, but cumulatively is it enough to address the increasingly critical needs that are at the interface of human activity and ecological systems."
In the late 70s and early 80s, Lyman was involved in a state-wide grassroots effort to get lawmakers to act on the then new science that proved the harmful effects of acid rain.
Lyman says the work that once relied on what she calls the “collective power†of individuals is now done primarily on the margins.
She says one reason for the shift was the movement's success.
But another reason is that environmental degradation is simply much less tangible than it once was.
For example, Lyman points to the untreated sewage and chemical waste that used to flow so freely into the Merrimack people couldn't swim in in the river.
"The environmental issues and the challenges are not as visible as those once dirty rivers that were pink and green on any given day, horribly smoggy skies, those were easy to rally around, the issues we are facing are much more amorphous and difficult to put your arms around and figure out how to do something about it."
Charlie Niebling agrees.
He is now with the New England Wood Pellets Company.
Prior to that he was with the organization the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests.
Niebling says the first Earth Day spawned groundbreaking legislation like the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act.
But they addressed what Niebling calls the “low-hanging fruitâ€.
He says advances in science and technology mean the issues are more complex…and more costly than ever.
"Our ability to measure pollutants is much more acute and much more advanced than it was 20 or 30 years ago, the ability to measure mercury in fish or arsenic in the water, at very minute levels, and our understanding of the impact of pollutants on fish wildlife and humans is much more advanced today, we understand that very small amounts of mercury can have deleterious health effects, 30 or 40 years we didn’t have the ability to make those measurements."
Niebling says today growth and protecting the state’s natural resources top his list of environmental issues facing the state today.
Environmentalist Marcy Lyman agrees.
And she adds global warming to the list.
She says we've got a long way to go before people in New Hampshire understand their role in this international problem.
But Lyman takes comfort in the fact that the state has a long environmental track record.
"What I do love about working in New Hampshire there is both a culture and tradition of citizen engagement and conservation, starts certainly as the turn of the century, really was citizens getting together to address the over harvesting of the forest in the White Mountains and worked to get the first national forest started, I just think that is a huge achievement, it is a huge comment on how we have continued to work in this state and I would challenge us all to work in that tradition because it’s a great tradition."
For NHPR news, I’m RK
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