Today is Earth Day, the April 22nd one, not to be confused with the Equinox Earth Day in March or the Earth Hour, also in March, or any of the various World Days (World Day for Water, World Day for Cultural Diversity, World Jump Day, et al). Each year, the April 22 Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.
Among other things, 1970 in the United States brought with it the Kent State shootings, the advent of fiber optics, “Bridge over Troubled Water,” Apollo 13, the Beatles’ last album, the death of Jimi Hendrix, and the meltdown of fuel rods in the Savannah River nuclear plant near Aiken, South Carolina — an incident not acknowledged for 18 years. At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans, industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press, and air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. “Environment” was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news.
But Earth Day 1970 turned that all around, thrusting the environment onto the national agenda. On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment.
Earth Day 1990 mobilized 200 million people in 141 countries and lifted the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, giving a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helping pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. Using the Internet to help link 5,000 environmental groups in a record 184 countries, it sent the message loud and clear that citizens around the world wanted quick and decisive action on clean energy. And Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days to date, with an estimated billion people participating in the activities world wide.
Today, Earth Day Network reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, while the domestic program engages 5,000 groups and over 25,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. Notable is that Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities with more than a half billion people participating in Earth Day Network campaigns every year.
Who cares? Well, we all should. We can argue whether the pendulum has swung too far or not yet far enough, but we all agree that environmental issues command an important place on the world agenda and that we all share responsibility for the proper care and feeding of Mother Earth.
By the way, what ever happened to Captain Planet and the Planeteers? Did environmental extremists (or Turner) render them irrelevant? Anyone?