Environmental movement continues to grow and change

A movement that took off as a global initiative in the 1970s to address concerns about the state of the world’s land, rivers, lakes and air, has continued to grow and change year-after-year.

According to the late U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, of Wisconsin, the founder of Earth Day, the seeds were actually planted earlier. Initial ideas in the 1960s primarily focused on shining a bright light on environmental problems and issues via government initiatives. The effort got a slow start, but Nelson continued his own crusade right up until the early 1970s when the timing was right and it caught fire and went “global.”