Earth Day started in 1970, a grass-roots effort in response to the Union Oil Platform “A” blow out in January 1969. That environmental disaster, off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, dumped more than three million gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean, killing countless fish, dolphins, pinni-peds and seabirds. [In contrast to the Union Oil Platform A blow out, the Exxon Valdez disaster in March 1989 in Prince William Sound, Alaska, spilled almost 11 million gallons of crude oil, and the Deep Water Horizon spill dumped over 210 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, beginning in April 2010. These industrial disasters are still the top three oil spills in the United States.]
In the U.S., the same grassroots response that led to the first Earth Day also provided the stimulus for some of the first laws and regulations to protect our environment. Sadly, despite...