But let's summarize the points that were brought home today to a lot of people who have missed the points so far.
For instance, the militants who see all this as an establishment trip to divert attention from what to them are more urgent concerns like civil rights or like Vietnam.
They seem to have missed the point that there are no civil rights or peace in a lifeless world.
For instance, the politicians who see this as a safe crusade, they seem to have missed the point that it will involve treading on more special interests than ever in our history.
For the first time, they may even have to come out against motherhood.
For instance, those in industry who see the crisis is only the hysterical creation of do-gooders, they've missed the point.
If they haven't heard the unanimous voice of the scientists warning that halfway measures and business as usual cannot possibly pull us back from the edge of the precipice. For instance, the two silent majority.
The greatest disappointment today was a degree of non-participation across the country, and especially the absence of adults.
And the young people that did participate were in a skylight mood, which contrasted rudely with the messages of apocalypse.
Those who ignored Earth Day, well, that's one thing.
Those who ignore the crisis of our planet, that's quite another.
The indifferent have missed the point that to clean up the air and earth and water in the few years science says are left to us means personal involvement and may mean personal sacrifice the likes of which Americans have never been asked to make in time of peace.
The sense of today's teaching was that America must undertake a revolution in its way of life.
Affluent America will, we were told, almost certainly, have to scale down its standards of living, give up having as many cars, as many children, as many cans, as many conveniences, as much conspicuous consumption.
Someday, we heard today, the world will be a better place if it listens and acts.
But in the meantime, perhaps for a generation or more, it will be frighteningly costly to each of us to clean up the mess each of us has made, but the cost of not doing so is more frightening.
That's what today's message really means.
And those who marched today and those who slept and those who scorned are in this thing together.
What is at stake and what is in question is survival.
This is Walter Cronkite. Goodnight. -- April 22, 1970, CBS News
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Tremendous Progress, But We’re Not Done
Walter Cronkite died in 2009, so he saw the tremendous progress we’ve made since that first Earth Day in 1970.
All of us who participated in that first Earth Day for energized to push and work for solutions to make things better.
James Seif, former Secretary of DEP, EPA Regional Administrator and environmental attorney, called the Environmental Movement one of the two biggest movements of our lifetime-- the other is Civil Rights. Read more here.
Seif should know better than most, because his mother was classmates with Pennsylvania’s Rachel Carson at Chatham University.
Carson is often cited as one of the key figures in founding the modern Environmental Movement based on science, disciplined inquiry and bringing those findings to the public.
Since that first Earth Day, we got the big chunks out of our water, air, reclaimed the land, restored our watersheds and found much cleaner ways to generate the power we use.
Great accomplishments! And the world is a much better place than it was since 1970.
But Cronkite’s words are also a modern caution against backslidding, rollbacks and falling back into a pattern of ignoring the new challenges science has identified-- once we got the big chunks out of the way.
We aren't done. Those who think we are, need to be re-taught the lessons from that first Earth Day “teach-in” 56 years ago.
“What is [still] at stake and what is in question is survival.”
“And those who marched today and those who slept and those who scorned are in this thing together.”
“But in the meantime, perhaps for a generation or more, it will be frighteningly costly to each of us to clean up the mess each of us has made, but the cost of not doing so is more frightening.”
All still true today.
(Photos: Earthrise from Apollo 8 on Dec. 24, 1968; Earthrise or Earthset? from Artemis II April 7, 2026 - Still the Big Blue Marble in Space.)
[Posted: April 27, 2026] PA Environment Digest
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