Earth Days: American Experience

Season 22, Episode 1 of 1

It is now all the rage in the Age of Al Gore and Barack Obama, but can you remember when everyone in America was not "Going Green?" "Earth Days" looks back to the dawn and development of the modern environmental movement -- from its post-war rumblings in the 1950s and the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson's incendiary bestseller Silent Spring, to the first wildly successful 1970 Earth Day celebration and the subsequent firestorm of political action. The stories of the era's pioneers -- among them former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall; biologist/Population Bomb author Paul Ehrlich; Whole Earth Catalog founder Stewart Brand; Apollo Nine astronaut Rusty Schweickart; and renewable energy pioneer Hunter Lovins -- are illustrated with an incredible array of footage from candy-colored Eisenhower-era tableau to classic tear-jerking 1970s anti-litterbug PSAs. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone (Oswald's Ghost, Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst) this AMERICAN EXPERIENCE film is both a meditation on man's complex relationship with nature and a history of the revolutionary achievements -- and missed opportunities -- of groundbreaking eco-activism.

Previously Aired

Day
Time
Channel
4/19/2010
9 p.m.
4/20/2010
2 a.m.
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