Rediscovering climate action's bipartisan drive: an interview with Tia Nelson

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 drew twenty million Americans into the streets, a scale of unified environmental action that feels almost unimaginable in today's polarized landscape of climate discussions. In this interview, Tia Nelson, daughter of Earth Day's founder Senator Gaylord Nelson, discussed the personal lessons she carries from her father's legacy and what it takes to rebuild the same kind of broad, bi-partisan climate action that defined the early Earth Day movement.

I'm most curious about your personal story and connection to your father, Senator Gaylord Nelson. If there is a legacy that your father left for yourself, what might that be?

That's a beautiful question. My father influenced me in a number of ways. But in terms of how I decided to dedicate myself to the environment, sometimes I tell people it must have been by osmosis: a young child spending a lot of time in nature with my father and hearing him talk about these issues. But in terms of what I think he imbued in me that I find so valuable that helps me remain diligent and hopeful in my work today during such challenging times, is really the Earth Day story. You know, when he called for an environmental teach-in on the environment that became Earth Day, April 22, 1970, which remains today the largest secular event in our history.

He couldn't have foreseen the outcome of that call to action. He had seen how college campus protests against the Vietnam War were affecting the national dialogue in this country on the war. And that's inspired him to think of suggesting this environmental teach-in on the environment. What it demonstrates to me is that you never, you can never foresee the outcome of, of your actions and that individual action does matter. And that we get up in the morning and we work from a place of diligence and integrity on the things we care about, knowing that the unimaginable can happen. 

Earth Day was successful beyond my father's wildest dreams. He could not have predicted that this call to action for an environmental teach-in would lead to Earth Day and 20 million people gathering, launching what many people call the environmental decade. More environmental laws were adopted in the decade that followed the first Earth Day in the United States than any time in history. A Republican president signed into law the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency to protect everyone's right to breathe clean air, drink clean water.

These were remarkable. It changed the course of history, but he couldn't have foreseen that. And so I think for me, the biggest lessons are that individual action matters and that you can't predict the outcome, that you work to do the right thing, and that really unimaginable and, and impactful things can come from, from that persistence and diligence and effort.

From the standpoint of an environmental activist yourself, I'm also very interested in your expert opinion on what impact and significance Earth Day has left on the history of environmental protection that is still relevant today.

Well, it's remarkable to me that 50 plus years after the first Earth Day, we now celebrate globally, close to 200 countries participate in one way or another, the citizens across the globe in actions related to the environment. And I think there's a book you might want to look for called the genius of Earth Day by Dr. Adam Rome. And he puts forward the notion that my father's call to action was a bottom up call to action.

He didn't tell people what they should do. Some people planted trees, some people cleaned up in their parks, some people protested. There was such a, the key was to invite people to participate and act in a way that was meaningful to them, but not prescribed by him. And I think that's remarkable. And I think that's a large contributing factor to the fact that 10% of the population participated in communities across this country, decided what was important to them and how they wanted to act and engage. And so that it is an enduring event and legacy would surprise and delight my father that wasn't his, he never imagined that that would be the outcome.

I think it continues to inspire people today. When I was speaking earlier to you about individual action matters and not knowing the outcome, think of other examples. Think of Greta Thunberg, the climate activist. She couldn't possibly have known that her single act of quietly protesting in front of the Swedish parliament would precipitate a global youth movement on climate change. Or you think about Rosa Parks, who refused to move to the back of the bus in a time of racial segregation in this country. She could not have known that would inspire and invigorate and precipitate significant changes in civil rights in this country. In each of these cases, an individual simply acts from a place of principle, and these remarkable history shifting events occur. And that to me remains a great inspiration for my own work.

On the bigger agenda of environmental protection, I think the nature of environmental pollution has really changed significantly over the decades. So while air pollution caused by industrialization was considered severe in the past, looking at today and the future, we see forms of new climate crises emerging such as the carbon footprint of AI data centers and overconsumption patterns. Having worked on the front lines for over a decade, what do you see as the patterns of environmental issues as a whole in the past, present and future? And specifically, what kind of problems do you consider the most urgent going forward?

Well, I think without a doubt that climate change is the greatest environmental challenge that we face and will face going into the future. It impacts every element of our lives. And we have a situation where we have to be working on reducing emissions while also working on creating greater resiliency in our communities and in acknowledgement that the warming of the planet is occurring, that impacts on people and ecosystems are occurring. So we need a dual strategy of both emissions reductions and adaptation and resiliency strategies. And it's a big challenging issue that touches every element of our economy and our lives. And I don't think there's any issue today more important than that.

Our big challenge today is that in this hyper politicized environment in which we're living today, it's become ideological in a way that it was not previously. And while one can despair about that, I also try to think of it as if we were able in the past to talk about this issue as a community, as a group of elected officials, then it's possible to return to that place. 

With the political landscape of today presenting a challenge and contrast of great polarization and the fracturing of climate action, what do you think accounts for the unprecedented unity that stemmed from the initial Earth Day? And are there any lessons from it that can be applied today regarding how to organize climate action in such a politicized context?

I think it was a couple of things. Not long before, not sure how many months, but the year before, in 1969, the Cuyahoga River was so polluted that it ignited and burned for days. There were extraordinary visual representations of pollution. We had no air quality standards. People could see and experience it, and I think that's one of the challenges of climate change. As you know, carbon dioxide by itself is not a pollutant. It's not something you see. 

Also, activism was very much on people's minds because of the war. My father's call to action was an open invitation to do what was meaningful to you or to the individual. There was some secret sauce of serendipity that occurred with these combination of factors, the visible pollution, the invisible power of activism around other issues at that time.

My father was a great orator. He was an inspiring speaker. He worked extraordinarily hard to deliver this message relentlessly. It was a combination of those factors. There was a big part of this that was not calculated and was not foreseeable. And I wish I knew what that magic was. I've given you a sense of some of the factors that I think contributed, but that's the best I can do right now.