Environmentalism is challenged.  Though many assert that the battle to safeguard the environment is nearly over, public vigilance is needed now more than ever, warns Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson.

More than 30 years after the first Earth Day, Nelson makes an impassioned plea to protect the planet from further serious degradation.  Offering a prescription for action calling on the President, Congress and citizens to discard short-term
thinking, Nelson says it is time to reassert the environment as a national priority to assure our future prosperity and the well-being of future generations.  Scroll Down

In Beyond Earth Day: Fulfilling the Promise, Nelson outlines an environmental agenda that focuses on three critical areas:    

  1. Environmental Education

  2. Promotion of Environmental Ethics

  3. Reopening the Dialogue on U.S. Population and Immigration Policies

Serving in the United States Senate from 1963 to 1981, Nelson promoted the creation of fundamental laws that Americans have fought to defend against those who would exploit our environment for political and economic gains.  He reminds us that despite critics’ doomsday predictions of economic collapse that he and other environmental defenders faced in passing these laws, the nation has flourished.  Indeed, economic progress and a healthy environment go hand in hand, he writes.

September 11th and the months that followed made Americans realize their nation’s role in world politics.  Americans also grew in realizing how strong an influence perceptions of the United States have on other cultures.  Scroll Down

Recognizing the United States’ role in the global environmental predicament, Nelson says the nation’s first response must be to get its own house in order.  For better and worse, the United States has tremendous power to affect the world environment – in both consumption of natural resources and ability to influence environmental practices.  By recognizing our collective and individual responsibility to the Earth, Nelson says the country can lead by example and help reverse the tide of environmental degradation before it is too late. 

With the same eloquence that has helped him articulate the nation's environmental ills through the decades, the former Wisconsin senator warns that the United States' myopic focus on short-term economic measures overlooks the very underpinnings of economic success for this or any nation.

"Intellectually, we finally have come to understand that the wealth of the nation is its air, water, soil, forests, minerals, rivers, lakes, oceans, scenic beauty, wildlife habitats and biodiversity. Take this resource base away, and all that is left is a wasteland," Nelson writes. "In short, that's all there is. That’s the whole economy. That's where all the economic activity and all the jobs come from. These biological systems contain the sustaining wealth of the world."
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