Denis Allen Hayes (1944 – ) American environmental activist and Earth Day organizer

As executive director of the first Earth Day in April 1970, Hayes helped launch the modern movement of environmentalism , and has promoted the use of solar energy and other renewable resources. A native of Camas, Washington, Hayes acquired his appreciation of nature exploring and enjoying the mountains, lakes, and beaches of the Pacific Northwest. At age 19, he dropped out of Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, and spent the next three years traveling the world. He installed church pews in Honolulu, taught swimming and modeled in Tokyo, and hitchhiked through Africa.

After returning to the United States, Hayes enrolled at Stanford as a history major, was elected student body president, and became active in the anti-Viet Nam War movement, occupying laboratories that researched military projects. After graduating from Stanford, he went to Harvard Law School, but dropped out in 1970 to help organize the first Earth Day. During the Carter administration, Hayes headed the federal Solar Energy Research Institute. He left after the agency's $120 million budget was cut by the Reagan administration. From 1983 to 1992, after completing his law degree at Stanford, he served there as an adjunct professor of engineering.

In 1990, as the international chairman of Earth Day on its twentieth anniversary, Hayes helped to organize participation by over 200 million people in 141 countries. This event generated extraordinary publicity for and concern about global environmental problems. In 1992, Hayes was named president of the Seattle-based Bullitt Foundation, which works to protect the environment of the Pacific Northwest and to help disadvantaged children. He also serves as chairman of the board of Green Seal , a group that endorses consumer products meeting strict environmental standards and co-chairs the group promoting the "Valdez Principles" of corporate responsibility.

Hayes has received awards and honors from many groups, including the Humane Society of the United States , the Interfaith Center for Corporate responsibility, the National Wildlife Federation , and the Sierra Club . In 1990, Life magazine named him one of the 18 Americans most likely to have an impact on the twenty-first century.

Hayes has written over 100 papers and articles, and his book on solar energy, Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum World, has been published in six languages. He has long advocated increased development of solar and other renewable energy sources, which he believes could provide most of the nation's energy supply within a few years.

In 1990, Hayes wrote that "Time is running out. We have at most ten years to embark on some undertakings if we are to avoid crossing some dire environmental thresholds. Individually, each of us can do only a little. Together, we can save the world."

[Lewis G. Regenstein ]

RESOURCES

BOOKS

Hayes, D. Rays of Hope: The Transition to a Post-Petroleum World. New York: Norton, 1977.

PERIODICALS

Hayes, D. "Earth Day 1990: Threshold of the Green Decade." Natural History 99 (April 1990): 55–60.

——. "The Green Decade." Amicus Journal 12 (Spring 1990): 10–21. Reed, S. "Twenty Years After He Mobilized Earth Day, Denis Hayes Is Still Racing to Save Our Planet." People Weekly, April 2, 1990, 96–99. Ridenour, J. M., et al. "Global Prescription: Leading Conservationists Look to the Future and Speak Their Minds." National Parks 64 (March–April 1990): 16–18.