Earth Day 2023— Poster of the Week

The Thinker

Ray Osrin

Offset, 1970

Cleveland, Ohio

2318

Saturday is the 53rd anniversary of the first Earth Day. On April 22, 1970, 20 million people took to the streets and attended teach-ins throughout the U.S. to learn about how human actions—and the corporate drive for profits—were destroying the environment.

Without climate activists organizing to protect the environment, legislation such as the Clean Air Act (1970) and Clean Water Act (1972), would never have been passed. Factories would have continued freely emitting black clouds of toxic smoke, polluting the air we breathe, and filling our lakes, oceans, and rivers with garbage. We continue to fight pollution, and still have a long way to go—but imagine how much worse it would have been.

CSPG’s Poster of the Week, originally printed in 1970 for the first Earth Day,

features a reinterpretation of Auguste Rodin’s iconic “The Thinker” sculpture (1904) as a modern man wearing a gas mask, a grim prediction even with environmental protections.