ABSTRACT
The first Earth Day, held in the Spring of 1970, marked a momentous change in American culture. On this day, thousands of people all over the country took to the streets, the televisions, the newspapers, to agitate for a radical change in our attitudes toward the natural environment. Environmentalists paint a picture of the future that is anything but rosy. A world population of ten, twelve, even fifteen billion, choking on its own wastes and wracked by famines and man-made plagues, wages eternal internecine warfare over ever smaller supplies of land, food, clean water, and virtually all the other resources necessary to human existence. An important sphere of human action is predominantly future-oriented and we all know instances of persons undertaking great labors and making great sacrifices primarily for the benefit of future generations. The ideals of progress and individual liberty, far from being the causes of environmental problems, are the indispensable foundations of a genuine solution to these problems.
