Did you know? A highlight of the United Nations’ Earth Day cele- bration in New York City is the ringing of the Peace Bell, a gift from Japan, at the exact mo- ment of the vernal equinox.
Who Started Earth Day?
Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, was determined to convince the fed- eral government that the planet was at risk. In 1969, Nelson, con- sidered one of the leaders of the modern environmental move- ment, developed the idea for Earth Day after being inspired by the anti-Vietnam War “teach- ins” that were taking place on college campuses around the United States. According to Nel- son, he envisioned a large-scale, grassroots environmental demonstration “to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agen- da.”
Nelson announced the Earth Day concept at a conference in Seattle in the fall of 1969 and invited the entire nation to get involved. He later recalled:
“The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters and tele- phone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes and air— and they did so with spectacular exuberance.”
Dennis Hayes, a young activist who had served as student president at Stanford Univer- sity, was selected as Earth Day’s national coor- dinator, and he worked with an army of student volunteers and several staff members from Nel- son’s Senate office to organize the project. Ac- cording to Nelson, “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thou- sands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.”
The First Earth Day: April 22, 1970
On the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, ral- lies were held in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los An- geles and most other American cities, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. In New York City, Mayor John Lindsay closed off a portion of Fifth Avenue to traffic for several hours and spoke at a rally in Union Square with actors Paul Newman and Ali McGraw. In Wash- ington, D.C., thousands of people listened to speeches and performances by singer Pete Seeger and others, and Congress went into re- cess so its members could speak to their con- stituents at Earth Day events.
The first Earth Day was effective at raising awareness about environmental issues and transforming public attitudes. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, “Public opin- ion polls indicate that a permanent change in national priorities followed Earth Day 1970. When polled in May 1971, 25 percent of the U.S. pub- lic declared protecting the envi- ronment to be an important goal, a 2,500 percent increase over 1969.” Earth Day kicked off the “Environmental decade with a bang,” as Senator Nelson later put it. During the 1970s, a num- ber of important pieces of envi- ronmental legislation were passed, among them the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Im- provement Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act and the Surface Min- ing Control and Reclamation Act. Another key development was the establishment in December 1970 of the Environmental Pro- tection Agency, which was tasked with protecting human health and safeguarding the nat- ural environment—air, water and land.
What Do You Do For Earth Day?
Since 1970, Earth Day celebra- tions have grown. In 1990, Earth Day went global, with 200 mil- lion people in over 140 nations participating, according to the Earth Day Network (EDN), a nonprofit organization that coordinates Earth Day activities. In 2000, Earth Day focused on clean energy and involved hundreds of millions of people in 184 countries and 5,000 environmental groups, according to EDN. Ac- tivities ranged from a traveling, talking drum chain in Gabon, Africa, to a gathering of hun- dreds of thousands of people at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Today, the Earth Day Network collaborates with more than 17,000 partners and organizations in 174 countries. Ac- cording to EDN, more than 1 billion people are involved in Earth Day activities, making it “the largest secular civic event in the world.”
The theme of Earth Day 2020 is “climate ac- tion.” It will be celebrated with The Great Glob- al Cleanup, a day dedicated to removing trash from green spaces and urban centers alike. EarthDay.org hopes will be the largest volunteer event in history.
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