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Earth Day

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Earth Day is a name used by two different observances held annually in the (northern) spring, both intended to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth's environment. Earth Day is in the public domain and open to all persons to shape. Some grassroots Earth Day organizers seek to move the date of the observance to the Summer Solstice, to take advantage of the warm temperatures in the Northern hemisphere (where most people live) to create greater participation.

"May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life."

--United Nations Secretary-General U Thant
March 21, 1971. [1]

The Equinoctial Earth Day

The equinoctial Earth Day, also International Earth Day, is celebrated on the vernal equinox to mark the precise moment that spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. On equinox, night and day are in equal length anywhere on Earth. Therefore, a perfectly vertical pole standing on the equator at noon during equinox will not cast a shadow. At the South Pole, the sun sets and ends a six-month-long day while at the North Pole, the sun rises and hence ending six months of continuous darkness.

The United Nations celebrates Earth Day each year on the vernal equinox (around March 21). On February 26, 1971, UN Secretary-General U Thant signed a proclamation to that effect. At the moment of the equinox, the Peace Bell is rung at the UN headquarters in New York. It is a traditional observe the day by ringing of a Japanese Peace Bell. [2]

John McConnell first introduced the idea of a global holiday called Earth Day at a UNESCO Conference on the Environment in 1969, the same year that he designed the Earth flag. The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. U Thant supported John McConnell’s global initiative to celebrate this annual spring equinox event. Secretary General Waldheim observed Earth Day with similar ceremonies in 1972. The United Nations Earth Day ceremony continued each year on the day of the March equinox (20th or 21st), with the ringing of the U.N. Peace Bell at the very moment of the equinox. In 1975 the U.S. Congress and President Ford proclaimed and urged observance of Earth Day on the March equinox.

The April 22 Earth Day

In January 1970, the Environmental Teach-In decided to call their one-off event held on April 22nd, Earth Day. The day's success led to it becoming a regular event. Senator Gaylord Nelson, an environmental activist in the U.S. Senate, took a leading role in organizing the celebration, to demonstrate popular political support for an environmental agenda. He modeled it on the highly effective Vietnam War protests of the time. [3] Senator Nelson staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes (a Harvard student and Stanford graduate) as the National Coordinator of activities. It was the era of student political activism and outdoor protests that attracted news cameras. The nationwide event included opposition to the Vietnam War on the agenda. Pete Seeger was a keynote speaker and performer at the event held in Washington DC. Paul Newman attended the event held in New York City. [citation needed]

According to Santa Barbara Community Environmental Council:

"The story goes that Earth Day was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson after a trip he took to Santa Barbara right after that horrific oil spill off our coast in 1969. He was so outraged by what he saw that he went back to Washington and passed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth." [4]

According to Senator Nelson, Earth Day "worked" because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. Though he felt his committee had neither the time nor resources to organize the 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated, these things did happen. According to the Senator, "It organized itself." [citation needed]

The "holiday" proved extremely popular in the United States. The first Earth Day, in 1970, had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the U.S. Senator Nelson directly credited the first Earth Day with persuading U.S. politicians that environmental legislation had a substantial, lasting constituency. In 1971 Senator Gaylord Nelson announced an 'Earth Week' — for the third week of April — as a yearly event. [5]

Many important laws were passed by the Congress in the wake of the 1970 Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act, laws to protect drinking water, wild lands and the ocean. The EPA was created within three years of the first Earth Day. [6]

Day leadership fractured over the years, with Hayes and Nelson and other widely-known Earth Day leaders usually favoring more programmatic and conventional public relations approaches to the observance(s), while grassroots groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes. [7] (Hayes believes that automobiles should be banned.) [citation needed]

During Earth Day 2000, the event's 30th anniversary, actor Leonardo DiCaprio was chosen by Hayes to be the spokesperson of the event, despite the fact that DiCaprio drove a large SUV at the time and was viewed as wanting to rehabilitate his public image in the wake of Thai environmental protesters targeting him during the filming of the actor's film The Beach in 1999 (which was filmed in part in a Thailand national park).

The date chosen for Earth Day is coincident with the historical date of Arbor Day, a national tree-planting holiday started in the late 1800's. Arbor Day is celebrated on the birthday of its founder, Julius Sterling Morton. [8]

Another reading of the April 22 date understood by Earth Day organizers notes that the 1970 event took place between college students' Spring Break and final exams, enabling students to participate on campuses across the country. [9]

April 22, 1970, is also the 100 year anniversary of Lenin's birth and some rightists "noted darkly that Earth Day was also Lenin's birthday, and warned that the entire happening was a Communist trick." [10] Because the April 22 Earth Day was also a Vietnam War protest, and many of the protesters were aligned with North Vietnam and the Soviet Union [citation needed], there are many who believe this date was chosen deliberately. John McConnell has theorized that this may be the reason April 22 was chosen and why the organizers refused to change the date to March 21 thereafter. He made it clear that he didn't think Senator Nelson meant to connect the event to the centenary of Lenin's birth. In an April 14, 2000 interview, John McConnell said that may have been the case. He did not think Senator Gaylord Nelson chose it for this reason, however. [11]

Miscellaneous facts

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Notes

  1. ^ "2004 Earth Day". United Nations Cyberschoolbus. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  2. ^ "Japanese Peace Bell". United Nations. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  3. ^ Tim Brown (April 11 2005). "What is Earth Day?". United States Department of State. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  4. ^ "Earth Day". Community Environmental Council. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  5. ^ Jack Lewis (November 1985). "The Birth of EPA". Environment Protection Agency. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  6. ^ Tim Brown (April 11 2005). "What is Earth Day?". United States Department of State. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  7. ^ "History of Earth Day". Earth Day Network. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  8. ^ "The History of Arbor Day". Idaho Forest Products Commission. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  9. ^ "Earth Day Resources". Arts & Sciences Libraries. University of Buffalo. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  10. ^ "A Memento Mori to the Earth". Time. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
  11. ^ Gary Arvidson. "Earth Day Deception". International Earth Day. URL accessed April 25, 2006.
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