Meatless Monday: Celebrating Earth Day

Happy Monday.

This Friday marks the 41st observance of Earth Day, a day of environmental activism organized by Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin. 

Inspired by a tweet from the Elm City Market, a community owned food co-op scheduled to open in New Haven this summer, I propose a sustainable feast to honor the day.

Strawberries are seasonal in CA in Feb.

If you live on the West Coast, your farmers’ markets are already overflowing with Spring produce — from strawberries to new potatoes and greens. If you live in New England, the pickings are slimmer, but at the last CitySeed market in New Haven, offerings included winter spinach, parsnips, radishes, and carrots. You may not be able to craft an entirely local feast, but even in New England you can certainly find one or two local ingredients to incorporate into your meal.

Elm City Market provided a link to a page on the Organic Valley site where Regional Earth Dinner menus are posted. 

Another excellent source for inspiration for Earth Day or upcoming spring holiday menus is Simply in Season, by Cathleen Hockman-Wert and Mary Beth Lind, which features recipes using locally grown seasonal foods. The book's sections are organized by the seasons of the year. This is one of my most treasured cookbooks. Its recipes are simple, foolproof, and delicious.

Happy holidays. Happy eating.

Have a great week. And please come back soon for more food news and culinary adventures.

I try to blog on food or food issues each Monday in support of Meatless Monday, one of several programs developed in the Healthy Monday project, founded in 2003 in association with Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications. Meatless Monday’s goal is “to help reduce meat consumption 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet.”

The Very First Earth Day

Nearly 40 years ago, on April 22, 1970, Americans observed the first Earth Day, an event envisioned by Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin). (Its logo, pictured at right,  appeared on a flag with green and white stripes.) Inspired by the political activism on college campuses in response to the Vietnam War, Nelson had proposed a national teach-in on the environment  to send a message to Washington that public opinion was solidly behind a bold political agenda on environmental problems.

Nelson insisted the first Earth Day's activities be created not by organizers in Washington, but by individuals and groups in their own communities. He later reflected, “Earth Day planned itself.”  On April 22, 1970, some 20,000,000  Americans participated in Earth Day events across the nation. In New York City, Mayor Lindsay closed Fifth Avenue for a demonstration attended by thousands. I attended a “teach-in” at Belmont High, its message so strong that I remember convincing my AP American History teacher that it was much more important to do a detailed project on air pollution than to take the AP exam. I recently re-discovered that handwritten paper, complete with copious footnotes and correspondence with Boston’s Mayor Kevin White, and now find myself picking up a thread that I began some four decades ago.

Let me put the first Earth Day in context.

In 1969, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River had caught on fire. Yes, a river had actually burned — for two hours! DDT was legal (not banned until 1972). In 1963, there were less than 500 pairs of American Bald Eagles in the entire lower 48 states. There was no EPA. Gasoline and paint contained lead. Students played with mercury in science class. Most importantly, there were no laws regulating the particulates and chemicals dumped into the environment. Factories, trash incinerators, and power plants spewed their filth, unregulated, into the air and waterways.

With the first Earth Day, the country seemed to wake up. According to information on the EPA website, “Born in the wake of elevated concern about environmental pollution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency opened its doors in downtown Washington, DC, on December 2, 1970. EPA was established to consolidate in one agency a variety of federal research, monitoring, standard-setting and enforcement activities to ensure environmental protection. EPA's mission is to protect human health and to safeguard the natural environment—air, water, and land—upon which life depends.”

In the decade following the first Earth Day, 28 pieces of environmental legislation were passed, including: the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act, the Water Pollution and Control Act Amendments, the Resource Recovery Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, the Federal Environmental Pesticide Control Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, and the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.

America’s eyes were finally open and the country pulled together to begin the work of undoing the damage caused by years of “choices neglected…in our efforts to achieve the most spectacular ‘progress’ the world has ever known.” (Pamphlet printed by the US Department of Health, Education, and Welfare 5/1/70)

Think of it, 28 pieces of legislation, driven by a movement inspired by Democrats under a Republican president, were enacted in just one decade — all of which imposed a tremendous cost on doing business. Hard to imagine that today!