President Obama told a romanticized version of Earth Day’s founding in his video for Earth Day 2010, but there is more to the story than a grossly polluted river and a noble hero rising up to champion the defenseless Earth. It was April 22, 1970, that Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, declared a national day of support for the Earth. He claimed to have thought up the idea in 1969, after seeing a devastating oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the Vietnam “teach-ins,” he thought to …
