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More than 50
years ago, a massive oil spill sent as much as
100,000 barrels of oil into the water and onto
the beaches of southern California. It was the
largest spill of its kind,
ever.
Gaylord
Nelson,
then Wisconsin’s junior U.S. Senator, sensed a
tipping point in a country increasingly alarmed
by the dismal state of its environment. So he
joined with Congressman Pete McCloskey, a
California Republican, to sponsor a series of
teach-ins that grew into a movement building
juggernaut.
Probably the most exciting thing
about that first Earth Day is that it brought
groups that had been fighting individually
against a range of environmental challenges -
from oil spills to polluting factories to
wildlife extinction and more - together around a
set of shared values.
And it worked
– within five years, the growing movement had
helped to create the US Environmental Protection
Agency and pass first of their kind laws, like
the Clean Air and Water Acts, the Occupational
Safety and Health Act and Endangered Species
Act. And by 1990, Earth Day had gone global,
with millions of people around the world
mobilizing.
What I find most remarkable about
that – particularly in light of today’s
political and social fractures – is that folks
understood they were up against something bigger
than any one individual or organization or
legislator or business leader could take on
alone.
That’s why it's fitting that this
Earth Day we’ll be joining hands with allies
around the world to demand a strong
international treaty that finally tackles
plastic pollution.
The
good news is, a United Nations treaty is already
in the works. But the devil is in the
details. We need a treaty that reduces
plastic production dramatically and rejects the
false solutions that the petrochemical giants
are promoting to distract and delay – things
like chemical recycling, plastic offsets and
more cleanups.
To do that, we
need to ensure that those most impacted by the
problem – whether they live next to an ethane
cracker in Pennsylvania or work as a waste
picker in the Philippines – have a seat at the
decision making table.
In the coming days, we’ll be sharing
a short video that introduces some of the ins
and outs of the negotiations currently
underway: which countries are helping,
which are not and what you can do to ensure we
get the strongest treaty we can.
We’ll also be
asking you to contact your national leaders,
wherever you live, to ensure they are on board
with the most ambitious terms possible in the
runup to the next negotiations in
May.
I won’t lie –
this is going to be a heavy lift. Just as Big
Oil didn’t lie down in the wake of that first
Earth Day, the petrochemical giants won’t go
quietly. In fact, major polluters like Exxon are
actively lobbying for a weaker
treaty.
But I know
this Community is ready to rally, alongside
friends from around the globe, just as you’ve
done every time we’ve asked.
So keep an eye out for our new video
and petition, and get ready to share them far
and wide.
No
matter how you’re tackling the plastics problem,
we need you.
Michael
O’Heaney
Executive
Director 
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