Robert Stone Tells The History of Earth Day on PBS (by PlanetForwardTV)
Planet Forward host Frank Sesno sits down with “Earth Days” director Robert Stone which “tells the back story of how we arrived at this point” and what lessons can be learned from past successes and failures.
This YouTube video was posted on 4/19/10.
I found Mr Stone’s movie at my public library. The movie is “Earth Days”. And it is chock full of information.
The first Earth Day was 4/20/1970 and this documentary a study on the culture, politics, environmentalism, human rights and environmental activism which culminated into many things, including Earth Day. Very well done. Great interviews with Denis Hayes, Paul Ehrlich, Rusty Schweickart, Pete McCloskey, Stuart Udall, Dennis Meadows and more. Great vintage film editing.
Here’s one of the things I learned. President Reagan’s election platform was, in part, based on promises of dismantling Carter’s concerns about our oil addiction. I guess the masses liked him but he really didn’t do us any favors by dismantling everything Jimmy Carter did to help us get off oil. I guess we’re lucky he didn’t undo Nixon’s work in establishing the EPA and all the other acts that helped clean up America. (None of which Nixon did out of the goodness of his heart.)
Did you know there was a bad air pollution event in NYC that killed a bunch of people in 1966?? No wonder they had to do something. But as is said in the documentary, policy can make all the difference. And now we’ve lost all those years.
Anyway good documentary. I give it ****
PS And what Stone mentions at the end of the video I posted above, re nuclear, nothing that like is discussed in the movie. I don’t know what that is all about. I’ve heard that nuclear power could have been developed to have less environmental impact had it not been done in tangent with weapons dev, but I don’t know much about that. Add it to my research list.
