In 1969, Sen. Gaylord Nelson was so moved after seeing the devastation of an oil spill off the California coast near Santa Barbara that he called for a national teach-in on the environment. The resulting "Earth Day" the following year kick-started the modern environmental movement and shaped the way Americans thought about their air, water and soil.
Forty years later, the magnitude of the Gulf oil spill far exceeds Santa Barbara's spill of up to 100,000 barrels, but there hasn't been a comparable societal transformation.
Last week, legislation imploded in the Senate to reduce greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, derailing environmentalists' top goal, and no national consensus has emerged to move America off oil and other fossil fuels into clean energy.
Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat who had long championed the environment, made the teach-in call during a speech in Seattle, which he wrote on napkins on the flight there, said Nelson's ...