Back to Earth: part II

For over a decade previous to the first Earth Day, bestselling books, first in German and then in English, had been warning the people of our world of the consequences of our fevered crusade, not just to humans, but to all of life.  At the same time the youth of the West, or at least the more sensitive, idealistic, inquiring, and vital of them, particularly those of the United States of America, the most advanced, wealthy, and powerful nation ever seen on Earth, this vanguard youth of the West, seeing these Earth-from-outer-space photographs as they had appeared, from ever higher orbits and then from the forays to the Moon, made the connection between these photographic revelations and those of the environmental prophets of doom.  Adults as well as youth were having the same experience, forming the same gestalt, which resulted in a plan to hold a national 'teach-in' about the plight of the earth, scheduled for the end of spring term, 1970, when as it happened, protest against the southeast Asian war threatened to swamp a mere environmental teach-in, but the eco-visionaries still managed to rally enough support, to enlist enough volunteers, and Earth Day events were mounted on many campuses across the nation and even beyond the campuses.  And it was a huge success, and media coverage of it got the essential message out to America, and even beyond it.  As a result, the new consciousness was strengthened and it was being called 'ecological' now, as well as 'environmental' (which to most people, it seemed, meant primarily pollution and resulting cancer).  'Ecology' was now extended from being the name of an obscure specialization of biology, to that of the new consciousness and its movement.  It is telling that the banner designed for Earth Day, the 'earth flag', was a whole-Earth-from-space image, though set against a dark blue background.  And the contemporaneous, wide-theta ecology symbol seems to represent the globe of Earth, likely inspired by the same photographs, both showing then the contribution of these views of our planet to the 'back to Earth' consciousness of the nascent ecology movement.