This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, April 15, 2011 -While the first Earth Day was in 1970, the event went global in 1990 with celebrations in 141 countries.
A year earlier, in 1989, Matt Diller, then 27, was mowing lawns and substitute teaching. He was also planning St. Louis' first Earth Day festival without quite meaning to.
"I was looking for a place to help, and I saw various bumper stickers or ads from environmental groups," he says. "I called a lot of environmental groups at that time and I heard about Earth Day on the radio in 1988, and I thought, well I want to be part of Earth Day '89."
There actually had been a festival in '88, Diller says, "but it was also sort of a NORML festival," of supporters of the legalization of marijuana and didn't go over so well with authorities, he added.
Diller called around to see who was organizing the event for '89, and no one was.
So Diller took on the job himself, organizing 50 environmental groups in St. Louis, with the band Jake's Leg and Riverfront Times founder Ray Hartmann as the master of ceremonies. The event took place in Creve Coeur Park, and Diller had to mow a few extra lawns to come up with the money for the million-dollar insurance policy on the event.
Today, both the Earth Day festival and Diller himself have come a long way. In its 22nd year, Earth Day in St. Louis is headed up by St. Louis Earth Day, a nonprofit. Diller, who has volunteered with the event for years, is a third-grade teacher at the College School, where he teaches the importance of both the "eco" in ecology and economy.
"You can't have one without the other. Eco means home," he says.
In 2007, Diller was one of the EarthWays Green Heroes. Days before the city's next Earth Day festival on Sunday, April 17, he took a few moments to talk about Earth Day then, Earth Day now and what needs to happen in the next 22 years. Answers were edited for length and clarity.
Tell us about the first Earth Day in St. Louis 22 years ago. How did that come about?
Diller: One of the things that came out of Earth Day was a little bit less confrontationalism with the mainstream. By this time, the baby boomers of the '60s were getting a little bit older and established in business and in the mainstream. Compared with Earth Day '70, people were more pragmatic. They thought, well, we've got to work within the system a little more and heaven forbid we should be successful, because it's really easy to have a boycott or a protest or a demonstration or a sit-in, but that's easy. You can just have fun and maybe spend the night in jail, but heaven forbid they actually call you to the table to negotiate. That takes the real hard work.
In the 22 years since that first festival, what's happened in terms of attitudes and policies in St. Louis?
Diller: It's gone up and down. It definitely took a downturn through some different political cycles and through changing prices of gasoline and just the attention of the world. You had some different movements like save the forests and stop clear cutting to go with more recycled paper between the '90s and the millennium.
You had the rainforest movement that didn't save the rainforest necessarily but did protect some areas.
A lot of groups that probably would have been on the fringe -- high school ecology clubs and small environmental groups with only a few people -- used Earth Day to connect with the public and do fundraising. Since then quite a few environmental groups in St. Louis have become stronger.
Now, it feels even more real, more of a cultural shift. A lot of people are rethinking the American dream of the past -- you know, you're gonna own a house in the suburbs and a couple of cars and have two kids and everyone's going to retire early. I think that's shifting to a sustainable dream. I'm going to be financially sustainable and save rather than overextend myself. I'm going to be ecologically sustainable by being careful with my resources, and I'm going to be culturally sustainable, which means I'm going to respect multiple perspectives.
What does Earth Day mean today to you and the community?
Diller: It's always been a marketplace of ideas. And I got this from the key organizers from the very beginning on a national level. They never wanted to make it a particular agenda. For instance, at Earth Day, you will have the fur trappers that see themselves as stewards of the environment and conservationists because they want to protect their resource -- furs -- right next to the animal rights activists of PETA. And so those are two distinctly different voices, and they are both welcome at Earth Day.
It's just become a cultural tradition. I think it's surpassed Arbor Day, but it's not up there with Fourth of July. As we go through the next decades, it's going to become an annual event that people just expect as an opportunity to celebrate their connection to the earth, the planet and with each other. Sustainability, not just environmentalism, it's also sustainability of a healthy economy, a healthy ecology and a healthy society.
Twenty-two years ago, did you think this would still be happening in St. Louis and that you would still be involved.
Diller: (Laughs) I think so. I did. I was very optimistic. I had a sense that if we're going to do something in our lifetime, we do have to stand up and put a little work into it, and so I don't think I had any doubts that it would catch on and it would become sort of an Earth Day every day kind of world. I'm glad to say that, although we have a long way to go, the successes that we see on a daily basis make me feel like we're going to figure this out. It might even get worse before it gets better. But I think we're going to figure out that the small changes we're trying to make are necessary and that we need to make more.
What needs to happen next in St. Louis and around the country to keep the environment in the forefront and to keep making the small steps that you hope to continue seeing?
Diller: To make the small steps easier. For instance, I'm really happy that St. Louis finally has recycling all through the city. It shouldn't be difficult to make wise decisions and sometimes you really have to go out of your way. It should be easy to make these choices to conserve energy or to use alternative energy.
Some people think it's a conservative or liberal issue, but it's not. It's a conservative practice to be conservative of your resources, just as it's a liberal practice to be respectful of our environment. There are shared values in taking care of our resources, and sometimes we forget that. The next steps in St. Louis would probably be to come together on that and just make it easier, more mainstream.