Bill Moyers: Caring for Creation

October 07, 2005

Bill Moyers is a broadcast journalist and former host the PBS program NOW With Bill Moyers. This piece is adapted from the keynote address Moyers presented to the annual convention of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Austin, Texas, on October 1, 2005.

I don’t fit neatly into the job description of an environmental journalist, although I have kept returning to the beat ever since my first documentary on the subject some 30 years ago. That was a story about how the new Republican governor of Oregon, Tom McCall, had set out to prove that the economy and the environment could share the center lane on the highway to the future.

Those were optimistic years for the emerging environmental movement. Rachel Carlson had rattled the cage with Silent Spring, and on the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million Americans rose from the grassroots to speak for the planet. Even Richard Nixon couldn’t say no to so powerful a subpoena by public opinion, and he put his signature to some far-reaching measures for environmental protection.