A Fierce Green Fire

American Masters: A Fierce Green Fire is the first big-picture exploration of the environmental movement, spanning 50 years of activism. Chronicling the largest movement of the 20th century, the film tells vivid stories about people fighting – and succeeding – against the odds, from the Grand Canyon to Love Canal, from the oceans to the Amazon. A film by Academy Award-nominee Mark Kitchell.

The neighborhood called Love Canal in Niagara Falls, New York, was neither the first nor the worst toxic waste dump, but it became a national story in the late 1970s thanks to the organizing efforts of Lois Gibbs, who fought to protect Love Canal's children, including her own, from the 20,000 tons of toxic waste in the ground. An excerpt from "American Masters: Fierce Green Fire," airing April 22.

In the late 1960s, the Sierra Club's fight to save the Grand Canyon from dams was met by retaliation by the IRS. Between the Sierra Club's advertising campaign and the involvement of the IRS, public opinion was galvanized to protect the Grand Canyon. This video is an excerpt from American Masters: A Fierce Green Fire, premiering on PBS on Earth Day, April 22, 2014.

Rex Wyler and Paul Watson, both among the co-founders of Greenpeace, describe the danger and tragedy of the first whale rescue mission they conducted in 1975, when Russian whale hunters were tracking a pod off the coast of California. This video with archival footage of the rescue mission is an excerpt from American Masters: A Fierce Green Fire, premiering on PBS on Earth Day, April 22, 2014.

In the 1980s the fate of the Amazon rainforest turned on an unlikely environmental hero: Chico Mendes (1944 - 1988), a poor rubber tapper and union organizer in Brazil. As cattle ranching and logging threatened the rainforest with deforestation, Mendes formed a workers union that aligned itself with environmentalism. This excerpt is from American Masters: A Fierce Green Fire, premiering 4/22/14.

"This is bigger than the Catholic Church," says Paul Hawken about people's concern about the earth and use of its resources. "There are literally two million organizations in the world that are working on these issues of social justice and the environment because they’re inseparable." Activist Robert Bullard thinks anyone who wants to consume clean resources is an environmentalist.

The environmental justice movement came from communities that historically bore the brunt of hosting waste sites in their backyards. When a predominantly black county in North Carolina protested a toxic waste landfill, it galvanized the nation to talk about environmental racism. This video with archival footage is an excerpt from American Masters: A Fierce Green Fire, airing April 22, 2014.

In this web exclusive video, learn why the Indian women of the Chipko Movement became known as tree huggers and what their defensive tactics were. The Kenyan environmental and political activist Wangari Maathai (1940 - 2011) founded the Green Belt Movement in 1977 and was the first African women to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Watch "A Fierce Green Fire" on April 22, 2014, at 9 pm on PBS.