The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) in response to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, the most devastating in U.S. history at the time; more than three million gallons of crude oil gushed into the ocean. Nelson asked the young people of America to use the same energy they had demonstrated in opposing the Vietnam War to fight for environmental causes. An estimated 20 million people attended inaugural events at tens of thousands of sites. It is considered the watershed moment in the modern environmental movement. This poster for the first official Earth Day was produced to benefit the now-defunct American Environment Foundation. Additional prints were made without the date on the lower right for sale as limited, signed editions. Here, America’s bald eagle stands proudly as the symbolic centerpiece, surrounded by images of pollution and devastation. At the time of this poster’s publication, Robert Rauschenberg was the most famous artist in America. He believed in art as a catalyst for social change, donating his talents for both anti-war and environmental posters.