STATESIDE STORIES: Earth Day is a World Affair
Blog
By Mary Foran
The Earth Day 20 International Peace Climb, a 1990 expedition to the summit of Mount Everest celebrating the 20th Earth Day. It was the first time ever that American, Soviet and Chinese mountaineers had roped themselves together to climb a mountain, and no less than the Everest too.
It was in 1970 that a Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, shocked by the ravages of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill in California, started the Earth Day environmental movement that soon became a world-wide phenomenon.
Harnessing the hippie and anti-Vietnam War energies of the youth of the day, the Senator conducted teach-ins on air and water pollution and put environmental concerns onto the national political agenda.
US Senator Edmund Muskie, author of the 1970 Clean Air Act, is keynote speaker at the first Earth Day, Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, on April 22, 1970. An estimated 40,000-60,000 people attended.
The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water and the Endangered Species Acts, with unprecedented Republican and Democratic support.
Some environmentalists celebrate Earth Day on the March Equinox, while others take the whole month of April to celebrate events based on environmental themes.
Typical ways of celebrating Earth Day include the planting of trees, picking up roadside trash, recycling and conservation programs, signing petitions for more government action, and joining the thousands who rally for the cause of a clean environment.
Sally Eaton, “Jeannie” in the Broadway rock musical Hair, sings “Hello Sulfur Dioxide” at the 1970 Fairmount Park Earth Day. (Hair is about a tribe of politically militant New York hippies in the Age of Aquarius.)
The Earth as seen from space, the beautiful blue and green planet we all share, is the usual symbol for Earth Day. It reminds us how precious our planet is, and how we all need to be conscientious stewards of the Earth’s limited resources.
Photos
>Featured image (broken seedling being tended by a child), by D. Sharon Pruitt of Pink Sherbet Photography (www.pinksherbet.com) . CC Attribution 2.0
>Earth Day 20, Sen. Edmund Muskie, and Sally Eaton: By 1970 Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia (http://earthweek1970.org ) . CC BY-SA 3.0
