Happy Earth Day! I don’t know about where you live, but there has been a ton of Earth Day activity and press coverage in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Earth Day Network has a list of some of the larger events around the world. With all the Earth Day coverage and events, I became curious and wanted to learn more about the history of Earth Day. I’ll be the first to admit that I was very naïve about the environment and being green just a few years ago. Not too long ago, I actually thought Earth Day was a new movement started by Al Gore or someone from an environmental organization.
April 22, 2008 actually represents the 38th anniversary of Earth Day, with the first formal Earth Day held April 22, 1970. Although there were numerous events culminating to the birth of Earth Day including a huge amount of grassroots activism throughout the 1960s, the birth of Earth Day is attributed to Gaylord Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin. Gaylord Nelson, an environmental activist himself, had originally called for an environmental teach-in to be held on April 22, 1970. He modeled the teach-in after the Vietnam War protests, hoping to show people there was popular support for the movement. Senator Nelson even passed a bill designating April 22nd as the national day to celebrate the Earth.
The first Earth Day saw an estimated 20 million people participating across the United States from thousands of schools and universities. 1970 was also the year President Nixon started the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and when Congress amended the Clean Air Act to include national air quality, anti-pollution, and auto emission standards. Today, Earth Day is an event organized by the nonprofit Earth Day Network and observed by nearly 200 countries and hundreds of millions of people around the world. Earth Day has now become a huge promotional event for many companies and is even a weeklong observation for many cities.
Happy Earth Day to all of you. Whether it’s driving less, consuming less, recycling, or just making your carbon footprint that much smaller, I hope everyone is doing what they can to help Earth. Everyday, I hope we reach the miraculous tipping point when the planet begins healing. We only have one planet for ourselves and our posterity, and we have to make it last.
Now that there has been an official observation of greening the earth, what will be done next? If you have been making an effort to change habits in small ways, then the answer is simply to maintain the lifestyle that you have created. Enthusiasm is contagious. The more others see that you are committed to meaningful change, the more they will take inventory of their own habits. To look at the global issues is important to develop a vision of the long term goals. What is more important is to set small personal goals. This approach not only breaks down the bigger issue into manageable parts, but also allows us to measure the progress of our own contributions. There is much at stake for all of us, but in particular, those who will need the earth next.
The Green Guy
Thanks for your response. I love your enthusiasm, and I completely agree with your perspective!