"I truly believe that we in this generation must come to terms with nature, and I think we're challenged as mankind has never been challenge before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves"  –Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

I'm sure that everyone knows the environmental movement was around long before Al Gore shared An Inconvenient Truth with us. Next year will mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, an observance whose popularity ebbs and flows. But the modern environmental movement goes back even a bit further than that. Earth Days chronicles the history of the environmental movement through the last half century.

We find out about Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring which first got the public's attention about pesticides and about The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich that told us how quickly the world was growing out of control. We see the first Earth Day and watch the development (and destruction) of various environmental policies.

All this is done through archival footage and reminiscing by nine people tied to the movement, each with a particular perspective: former Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall (The Conservationist); Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day (The Organizer); Steward Brand, editor of The Whole Earth Catalog (The Futurist); Paul Ehrlich (The Biologist); Hunter Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute (The Motivator);

Dennis Meadows, co-author of Limits to Growth (The Forecaster); overpopulation activist Stephanie Mills (The Radical), former Congressman Pete McCloskey (The Politician); and Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart (The Astronaut).

Each of these speakers begins by remembering the world they grew up in -- America of the 40s and 50s. They are good memories. We like to remember these good old days. Brand remembers the Conservation Pledge that he found in the magazine Outdoor Life in the 40s: "I give my pledge as an American to save and faithfully to defend from waste the natural resources of my country: its soil and minerals, its forests, waters and wild life."

Much of the film reminds us that the good old days weren't quite as good as we thought. We just have to shake our heads at some of the things we see and hear. We see footage of school children being fogged with pesticide as they eat their lunches or swim in a pool. We see the smoke from factories filling the skies. We see smog so bad that people died from it. A scientist (or, I suspect, an actor dressed as a scientist) rebuts Silent Spring: "Miss Carson maintains that the balance of nature is a major force in the survival of man, whereas the modern chemist, the modern biologist, the modern scientist believes that man is steadily controlling nature." Even a quote by a government scientist reported in a news story on the first Earth Day points to how little we understood even then: "Pollution and overpollution, unless checked, could so warm the earth in 200 years [emphasis added] as to create a greenhouse effect melting the arctic icecap and flooding vast areas of the world."

Earth Days provides a decent look at the history of environmentalism as far as it goes, but it really doesn't evoke the kind of passion that the issue calls for. As the film winds down, Stewart Udall calls himself "a troubled optimist". That is the tone of the film as well. It can't be called either especially dismal or especially hopeful. It looks more at the history itself than it does at possible solutions for the many crises we face.

It is also missing a key perspective, however. The religious community may have a spotty record in terms of dealing with the environment, but various religious bodies have been involved in speaking about the spiritual dimensions of environmental issues for many years. My own denomination, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), introduced the Alverna Covenant in 1981. Other groups had similar statements. The spiritual understanding of stewardship and dominion needs to be an important part of any review of the issues we face when we consider care for the earth.