Today is Earth Day. The Antiplanner remembers the first Earth Day in 1970, when it was called the National Environmental Teach-In. As a senior in high school in Portland, I had already started my first environmental group, whose pretentious and somewhat ominous name was the “Regional Environmental Research and Control Organization,” which we abbreviated to “ERC.”
Since ERC was already up and running, we had one of the largest environmental teach-ins at any Portland school. We brought in State Treasurer (and future governor) Bob Straub, City Commissioner (and future major) Neil Goldschmidt, City Commissioner (and also future mayor) Frank Ivancie, as well as representatives from state and regional water and air pollution agencies.
In 1970, when Portland photographer Ray Atkeson tried to take a photo like this, there was so much pollution that he had to stitch together a photo of Mt. Hood on top of a photo of the city. Now the mountain is visible from the city on any sunny day.
Flickr photo by RG Photo.
The environmental teach-in changed my life. Up to then, I wanted to become an architect. Instead, I decided to save the forests by going to forestry school and then to work for environmentalists, which is what I did.
