When Union Oil’s Platform A blew out on Jan. 28, 1969, it spewed at least 3 million gallons of crude oil into the Santa Barbara Channel.

It also brought about an epiphany for humankind — the realization that this is the only planet we have and we need to take better care of it.

And the epicenter of that awakening was the Central Coast.

Horrified residents watched their beaches turn black with oil — in some places it was 6 inches thick.

They saw thousands of dead seabirds wash onto the shore, their bodies smothered by the black ooze.

The spill spread over 75 square miles of ocean.

In the wake of this disaster, a new movement — environmentalism — came into being, celebrated as Earth Day on April 22.

It started in 1970, and is still going strong 56 years later, its roots firmly planted in the Central Coast. 

This year an estimated 100,000 separate events commemorating Earth Day will take place worldwide, with up to 1 billion people taking part.

Earth Day is now called the largest civic observance in the world. Events include climate marches, tree planting and beach cleanups.

“The need to address climate change has never been more urgent,” said Kathi King, director of education and operations of Santa Barbara’s Community Environmental Council.

“Communities across the globe are already feeling the impact of extreme heat, heavy rainfall and flooding and intense heat waves.”

These thoughts are echoed by Ashley Caras, a board member of Get Oil Out! (GOO!), one of the first environmental organizations formed in the wake of the 1969 spill.

“Earth Day is critically important,” she said, “because it is a big reminder every year about the need to address climate change and all of its ramifications.”

The 1969 disaster may have been the spark that ignited the world’s attention on the environment, but it did not come out of nowhere.

As far back as the mid-19th century some far-sighted people had sounded warnings about the effects of industrialization, deforestation and environmental neglect.

“Thank God men cannot fly,” Henry David Thoreau observed in 1862, “and lay waste to the sky as well as the earth.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson concurred.

“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors,” he said. “We borrow it from our children.”

Naturalist John Muir pointed out that “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

But Emerson, Thoreau and Muir were little more than voices crying in the wilderness. It wasn’t until 1962, when Rachel Carson published her groundbreaking book Silent Spring, warning about the dangers of pesticides, and an event in the small coal-mining town of Centralia, Pennsylvania, that the seeds of the modern environmental movement truly began to sprout.

As workers burned trash in a landfill, some sparks fell into an abandoned mine shaft, starting a fire of apocalyptic proportions in the network of mines that ran beneath Centralia.

The inferno became so intense that the ground above began to sink and crack open, allowing toxic gases to escape and render the town unlivable.

Now, 64 years later, that fire is still burning, and it could burn for another 250 years — a fiery symbol of environmental neglect.  

On the Central Coast, at least 60 separate events will take place on Earth Day this year.

“Environmental activism is a part of Santa Barbara’s DNA,” King said. “The 1969 oil spill was a wakeup call to the devastation the fossil fuel industry can cause and led to the birth of the modern environmental movement.”

Santa Barbara’s Earth Day Festival will feature around 200 booths, presenting a wide range of local nonprofit organizations working “in climate policy, clean water, public health and more.”

Among those booths will be one from Get Oil Out!, the pioneering environmental organization that is “at the forefront of addressing issues related to oil and gas development in the Santa Barbara Channel,” according to Caras.

“All of GOO!’s activities for the past 57 years have been about reducing fossil fuels usage,” she said.

This “must be done if our children and grandchildren are going to have a future with clean air and water and a healthy environment,” Caras added. “GOO!s strength lies in its number, and community members are invited to get involved.”

While the oil spilled in 1969 has long since been cleaned up, the impact of the Platform A blowout is still being felt worldwide.

In the wake of the Santa Barbara spill and the first Earth Day, the Environmental Protection Agency was established in 1970. The Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act all followed.

From the Central Coast to the rest of the world, Earth Day has made itself felt since 1970, and since the issues it focuses on have not gone away, its influence will continue and grow.

Earth Day lives on — and it started right here.