Earth Day 1970

Conservation Biology

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Earth Day 1970 Part 13 Conclusion CBS News with Walter Cronkite

Pacific Education Institute, 10 26, 2016

Video (2:39)

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Uploaded on Apr 11, 2010

http://earthweek1970.org - Original broadcast of CBS News Special Report with Walter Cronkite about the first Earth Day, 1970. Also known as Earth Week 1970.

Transcript

0:01 · The hoopla of Earth Day is over. The problems remain. Only time will tell if these demonstrations accomplished anything. But let’s summarize the points that were brought home today to a lot of people who have missed the point so far.

0:15 · For instance, the militants who see all this as an establishment trick to divert attention from what to them are more urgent concerns like civil rights or like Vietnam. They seem to have missed the point that there are no civil rights or peace in a lifeless world. For instance, the politicians who see this as a safe crusade, they seem to have missed the point that it will involve treading on more special interests than ever in our history. For the first time, they may even have to come out against motherhood.

0:44 · For instance, those in industry who see the crisis as only the hysterical creation of dogooders, they’ve missed the point if they haven’t heard the unanimous voice of the scientists warning that halfway measures and business as usual cannot possibly pull us back from the edge of the precipice. For instance, the too silent majority. The greatest disappointment today was the degree of nonparticipation across the country and especially the absence of adults.

1:10 · And the young people who did participate were in a skyllock mood which contrasted rudely with the messages of apocalypse. Those who ignored Earth Day, well that’s one thing. Those who ignore the crisis of our planet, that’s quite another. The indifferent have missed the point that to clean up the air and earth and water in the few years science says is left to us means personal involvement and may mean personal sacrifice the likes of which Americans have never been asked to make in time of peace.

1:40 · A sense of today’s teaching was that America must undertake a revolution in its way of life. Affluent America will, we were told, almost certainly have to scale down its standards of living, give up having as many cars, as many children, as many cans, as many conveniences, as much conspicuous consumption. Someday, we heard today, the world will be a better place if it listens and acts.

2:06 · But in the meantime, perhaps for a generation or more, it will be frighteningly costly to each of us to clean up the mess each of us has made.

2:18 · But the cost of not doing so is more frightening. That’s what today’s message really means. And those who marched today and those who slept and those who scorned are in this thing together. What is at stake and what is in question is survival. This is water crime guide.

2:37 · Good night.