Denis Hayes, Earth Day Network

Denis Hayes is chair of Earth Day Network. He was the national coordinator for the first Earth Day in 1970 and now earns his keep as president of the Bullitt Foundation in Seattle, Wash. He is also author of the new book The Official Earth Day Guide to Planet Repair.

I wake up early. Stretch. Run a couple miles. Lift some weights in the hotel gym. Just pump out the tension. Push 10 extra bench presses, thinking about a particularly nasty customer I have to deal with today.

Yesterday, we had a crew out in 45-degree rain erecting a massive stage on the Mall. Horrible for morale. But today it is sunny.

I shower and return several phone calls before heading across Washington for a satellite interview with Jim Altman of WAMI-TV in Miami. Jim, a young guy who mentions that he wasn't around for the first Earth Day, says he's taking a lot a crap from his colleagues because he just bought an SUV. So I give him some more crap, and say he should trade it in for a Prius. He says he needs the acceleration. I challenge him to a drag race -- him in his Cherokee and me in a Prius. "Hey," he says, "that might be good television."

I return to the hotel, make some phone calls to people who need to vent. Lots of people need to vent. These are the days of saying "no." (George Bush may not want to speak on the Mall for Earth Day, but apparently every other American does.)

It seems there will be an anti-Earth Day protest by people who are infuriated that the park vendors, whom we persuaded to serve some vegetarian fare for Earth Day, also plan to sell hot dogs to any carnivores who show up.

We've worked our tails off for a year on this campaign in order to build global momentum to get serious about climate change. If we attract only vegetarians, we guarantee failure. So Earth Day is bringing in people like singer Clint Black and AFL-CIO President John Sweeney to appeal to folks who don't ordinarily attend environmental rallies. The commercial vendors correctly calculate that some of these folks will want to buy their kids a hot dog, and Earth Day can't control what the vendors sell. (I don't plan to serve any hot dogs, eat any hot dogs, or buy my daughter any hot dogs, but for some reason the attacks seem mostly aimed at me.)

I just hope the protestors aren't so photogenic that they step all over our "Clean energy is ready now!" news story.

The Mainichi Shimbun science reporter stops by. A couple phone-ins, including what sounds like a great follow-up feature by Dan Jones of the Hartford Courant. I debate a libertarian on public radio. I do a stand-up in the Mall with a local weatherman. Bloomberg wants to know whether clean energy was prominent in the first Earth Day in 1970.

Finally, Michael Pitts and Todd Fetterman scoop me up and run me out to Dulles where I catch an AirTran flight to Atlanta. Cheap, but no food. So dinner is a PowerBar, again. (I just checked the label; it's meat-free, as best I can tell. Some of the ingredients are a little mysterious, but it's made in Berkeley, so I'm probably safe.) The guy next to me is reading The Fountainhead. We don't talk, though I'm tempted to ask whether he was the other guest in the NPR debate this afternoon. He doesn't look like he has much of a sense of humor.

Meg Ryan O'Donnell, our knockout southern regional coordinator, meets my plane. We take the MARTA downtown. My Thursday schedule is coming out of the hotel fax machine as I approach the front desk. Just-in-time organizing prevails again. I crash for the night.