About 20 million Americans turned out for the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. In his Reason March/April 1970 article "Infinite Sink No More," future Reason editor Robert Poole called ecology "The Issue of 1970."
Poole addressed contemporary concerns about rising air and water pollution, increasing population, and natural resource exploitation. He argued that the solutions to environmental problems were not to be found in the creation of new federal bureaucracies and the proliferation of regulations; instead, he advocated for "full liability," where individuals and companies would be responsible for the nonconsenting harms and costs they impose on other people. Poole observed that many, if not most, environmental problems are the result of the "tragedy of the commons," in which resources are plundered and polluted because no one owns them and thus no one has an incentive to protect, preserve, and profit from them.
