We’ve come a long way since the first Earth Day — and have far to go

By Robert Perschel

Worcester Magazine’s Earth Day column (Our Turn / “Get your hands dirty,” May 1) references Charles Reich’s 1970 book, The Greening of America. As I recalled my days as a student in “Charley’s” class at Yale, I wondered if readers know that this book is not about the environment. But then again, perhaps it is. At one level The Greening of America concerns itself with a shift in consciousness and rarely mentions the environment, but as I reconsider this work, perhaps it has everything to do with how we need to change the way we relate to the natural world.

In today’s lexicon, Reich’s book would be better titled The Rejuvenation of American Consciousness. In fact, the publication was held up because of concern over the title, but it wasn’t an environmental concern. In those days the term “greening” had not yet taken on the connotation it has today — the process of making decisions based on or becoming more aware of environmental considerations.

It was the spring of 1970 and Charley, who was at the height of his fame, often came to class barefoot. His course was eventually so popular that I had to win a lottery to enroll. The first Earth Day was still a few months away. Events ticked off in rapid succession that spring. Protest of the Vietnam War had reached a boiling point. My roommates and I had just received our draft lottery numbers and I was happy it was one lottery I didn’t win. The Black Panthers trial had reached the New Haven Court House, a few blocks from my dorm room.

An upstairs neighbor, a member of the Weather Underground, was arrested for plotting to blow up the campus post office, which was below our room. Another neighbor died on an acid trip. Rumor had it that the Black Panther Party’s campus headquarters was housed in the room below ours. At a rally at Ingalls Arena, their musclemen beat a white student on stage.

Then there were the killings at Kent State, the campus resistance, the cancellation of classes for the year, the massive rally on the New Haven Green and the decision of Yale President Kingman Brewster to open the gates of the campus to visiting protestors.

Amid the chaos was the world’s first Earth Day, with its local venue on the New Haven Green. As I reconsider Charley’s book, I now see the link to our environmental consciousness. At the time, however, he was proposing that American culture was blooming into a new and third wave of conscious awareness. The first stage was epitomized by “independence” as demonstrated by our Founding Fathers, small farmers and businessmen. Stage 2 involved lock-step adherence to the conservative societal norms and large institutions that arose before and after World War II. Charley was predicting Stage 3, a rejuvenation of American consciousness. The core of Stage 3 was reflected in the 1960s lifestyle and was focused on personal freedom. It included a big dose of drugs and music. Reich’s later book, A Stoned Sunday Rap with Jerry, Charles and Mountain Girl, detailed his relationship with the Grateful Dead and became the centerpiece of his course.

Stage 3 did not happen, at least not in the way Reich expected. But if you can fan away the celebrity and smoky haze there remains a core environmental message that can guide us through current environmental problems. Reich wrote about “a renewed relationship of man to himself, to other men, to society, to nature, and to the land”. Like Aldo Leopold and others before him, Reich was addressing the change in consciousness necessary for us to create a sustainable relationship to nature.

We’ve made a lot of progress since the spring of 1970. Although Reich’s major thesis never reached shore, he was sailing in the right ocean with his message of environmental consciousness. But while the ship of environmental consciousness makes intermittent port calls it remains mostly at sea. Perhaps global climate change is the issue that will blow it to port to stay. o

Robert Perschel is a resident of Holden. He was director of The Wilderness Society's Land Ethic Program and is the author of The Land Ethic Toolbox. He is also the author of a forthcoming book, The Heart and Mind of Environmental Leadership