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Earth Day, a worldwide event held annually on April 22, promotes and celebrates environmental protection. Environmental studies program director Jim Feldman sat down with us to chat about Earth Day and its historical connection to Wisconsin politics.

 

 

Video transcript:

Jim Feldman: “Earth Day is a little different today, I think, than it used to be. It started in 1970. It was the first one. The founder, the leader of the movement at the time was Gaylord Nelson, who was a Wisconsin senator. Gaylord Nelson was from Clear Lake, Wisconsin, and his entire political career he’d been a champion for conservation and for environmental issues. And he was in Washington D.C. as the senator. There were a series of environmental crises taking place amidst a context of all sorts of other social unrest of the late 1960s, early 1970s, and he and some staffers proposed the idea of a teach-in on college campuses around the country and began organizing for those, and it created one of the most successful protests in American history.”