Dear Care for Crash Victims Community Members:
We are living and dying from the invisible violence of the corona virus. By Earth Day April 22, 2020 the virus has resulted in more U.S. deaths in 2020 than are killed in car crashes in an average year.
I have just written an article published by Legal Reader on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day.
The idealism of the months after the first Earth Day that I observed was exciting. I had the privilege of participating in the Clean Air Car Race that summer. I described my experience at
The idealism expressed on and after Earth Day was soon subverted. Months later the loss of Public Health protections began under the Nixon Administration. The Nixon Administration transferred the air pollution program, in which I worked, from the PHS to the new EPA at the end of 1970.
EPA managers were heard to make sick jokes celebrating the downgrading of the mission from protecting people to protecting birds and bunnies.
Within a year, auto company executives were meeting with Nixon seeking relief from auto standards on air pollution and safety. See
More historical landmark documents of the times are at
