MANY THINGS CONSIDERED: Remembering Gaylord Nelson

By Marc C. Johnson

It’s Earth Day.

A very good day to remember the late Wisconsin governor and U.S. senator who was its inspiration.

Gaylord Nelson deserves being remembered for a host of reasons, but bringing environmental activism to “the mainstream of American life and politics,” as his biographer Bill Christofferson has written, is as a good a reason as any.

As the current president does everything possible to dismantle environmental protections, gutting the Forest Service, embracing the sell off of public lands, trashing green energy, installing industry shills at EPA and the Interior and Energy Departments and remains chronically ignorant of America’s conservation ethic, the man from Clear Lake, Wisconsin would likely be marching in the streets to oppose it all.

 

There may be some comfort – cold as it is – to remember, as my old boss Idaho governor and Interior Secretary Cecil Andrus liked to say, “not all the dinosaurs are in the tar pits.”

In other words, the charter members of the flat earth society, the climate deniers, the “rape, ruin and run” crowd have always been with us.

Those who believe the only good tree is one on the back of a logging truck or that no pristine mountain is worth more than an open pit mine have their place in our history, but so do those who stood up and said – STOP.

Gaylord Nelson was among the first modern American politicians – with apologies to Teddy Roosevelt – to effectively harness public interest and concern about the environment, and years before the first Earth Day he begin to push back against the mindless exploiters and the greedy despoilers.

 

That one-time Oregon politician is long gone and long forgotten, but the sentiments he expressed are, sadly, still very much with us.

This makes Nelson’s legacy arguably more important on this Earth Day than on the first Earth Day in 1970. As Nelson once said:

Is there anything more vital in the long view of history than the proper protection and conservation of our fresh water lakes, rivers, and streams, our wilderness, the soils and the forests, the air we breathe, the bugs and birds and animals and the habitat in which they live? I think not.

Gaylord Nelson served in the Senate when that body was inhabited by serious people in both political parties. Nelson’s smarts, personal integrity, common sense and deep commitment to real American ideals made him widely respected across the political spectrum.

He opposed the Vietnam War before it was politically safe to do so, he championed protections for some of America’s greatest places – the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore in Wisconsin, among others. He recognized the dangers of DDT and the necessity of consumer protection. He championed the Wilderness Act when it passed in 1964.

When, in 1999, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked a panel of historians to identify the most significant figures in Wisconsin during the 20th Century, Nelson ranked high behind only Fighting Bob La Follette, the conservationist Aldo Leopold and the iconic architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

Nelson lost re-election in 1980, a victim of the Reagan landslide that year when a 38-year old hard right wing Republican lightweight, Robert Kasten, out campaigned him and won, in part, on the strength of Reagan’s long political coattails.

True to character Nelson used the lame duck session of Congress after his 1980 defeat to pass more conservation legislation for Wisconsin and the nation.

If you took a moment today to reflect on the wonders of nature, the value of clean air and water, the importance of preserving wild places, you were honoring the legacy of Gaylord Nelson.

The current crowd trying hard to undo such a legacy will not, I believe, succeed. They misjudge the American people.

Nelson’s kind of decency may have been momentarily eclipsed by the nastiness and bitterness of our politics, but we are remembering him today, and not those who opposed what he stood for.

Here’s to Gaylord Nelson: Champion of the environment, father of Earth Day, a great American.

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About me: I am a Nebraska native, grew up in South Dakota and migrated in Idaho after college to work in broadcast journalism. In 1986, I joined the “comeback” campaign of a legendary Idaho political figure – Cecil D. Andrus – who eventually served four terms as governor and four years as Secretary of the Interior, not bad for a Democrat in a very conservative state. I had a small role in helping Cece Andrus win his last two gubernatorial terms. I did communication and crisis consulting work, and since “retiring” to the beautiful north coast of Oregon have written three books on U.S. Senate history. I’m working on a new book on another legend – this one a legend in journalism.

You can find my books here:

I write this Substack to scratch my itch to connect history with current politics. I hope, in some small way, to contribute to understanding of this perilous moment for our democracy, for free speech and facts.

It’s difficult to be an optimist in today’s world and I’m not all that optimistic, but I do focus on realism and try to populate my writing with solid sourcing and not merely opinion. I write these pieces to offer a perspective based on history and particularly American political history since 1900.

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