Tags: global warming, Earth Day, ecosystems, extinction, environment
April 22, 2009, marks the 39th celebration of Earth Day, a time when people around the world hold events to honor our home planet -- and to remind everyone about the importance of our ecosystem. Founded in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, a former United States senator from Wisconsin, Earth Day has grown into a global event. In 1970, 20 million Americans demonstrated in streets, parks, and auditoriums for a healthier, cleaner environment. This year, hundreds of millions of people in more than 180 countries are expected to participate in Earth Day activities around the world.
How the First Earth Day Came About
By Senator Gaylord Nelson, Founder of Earth Day
What was the purpose of Earth Day? How did it start? These are the questions I am most frequently asked.
Actually, the idea for Earth Day evolved over a period of seven years starting in 1962. For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political "limelight" once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.
I continued to speak on environmental issues to a variety of audiences in some twenty-five states. All across the country, evidence of environmental degradation was appearing everywhere, and everyone noticed except the political establishment. The environmental issue simply was not to be found on the nation's political agenda. The people were concerned, but the politicians were not.
After President Kennedy's tour, I still hoped for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea that became Earth Day occurred to me while on a conservation speaking tour out West in the summer of 1969. At the time, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, called "teach-ins," had spread to college campuses all across the nation. Suddenly, the idea occurred to me - why not organize a huge grassroots protest over what was happening to our environment?
I was satisfied that if we could tap into the environmental concerns of the general public and infuse the student anti-war energy into the environmental cause, we could generate a demonstration that would force this issue onto the political agenda. It was a big gamble, but worth a try.
At a conference in Seattle in September 1969, I announced that in the spring of 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment and invited everyone to participate. The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters, and telephone 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. For the next four months, two members of my Senate staff, Linda Billings and John Heritage, managed Earth Day affairs out of my Senate office.
Five months before Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the astonishing proliferation of environmental events:
"Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...."
It was obvious that we were headed for a spectacular success on Earth Day. It was also obvious that grassroots activities had ballooned beyond the capacity of my U.S. Senate office staff to keep up with the telephone calls, paper work, inquiries, etc. In mid-January, three months before Earth Day, John Gardner, Founder of Common Cause, provided temporary space for a Washington, D.C. headquarters. I staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes as coordinator of activities.
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 thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.
Did You Know There Are Actually Two Earth Day’s?
International Earth Day
March 20 is the International Earth Day, you may say isn’t Earth Day April 22? Well, yes there are two different Earth Days, The International Earth Day on March 20 and Earth Day on April 22. There are different origins and they both started about the same time.
The March 20 observance of International Earth Day started in 1969 with the proposal to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, and it was followed by an Earth Day Proclamation by the City. Then in 1971, at the UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organizations) Conference in San Francisco John McConnell proposed International Earth Day and it was signed by U.N. Secretary General U Thant. To date, a total of 39 world leaders, such as, Yasir Arafat, Yehudi Menuhin, Cosmonaut Anatoli Berezevoi Margaret Mead, and John Gardner have signed leaving space for one more signature.
Margaret Mead wrote an Earth Day Essay featured by International News Service.
This quote by Margaret Mead says it all “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.”
On 1974 McConnell, discussed his Earth Right proposal at the United Nations Raw Materials Conference his with Sheik Yamani of Saudi Arabia, and other leading delegates. McConnell later stated at the United Nations Church Center, “Underlying property rights and sovereignty rights is the fundamental right of every person on Earth to an equal share in Earth’s raw materials and natural resources.”In 2007 Weekly Reader Research surveyed 1,657 students between ages 6 and 18 from schools around the country. The organization found that 64 percent of America's youth have discussed the environment and global warming in class, and a majority (especially girls) expressed concern.
Still, most people are not freaking out over the prospect of climate change, the Gallup polling organization finds.
"While Americans say they are worried about global warming, they also believe the worst manifestations of the problem are a long way off," writes Lydia Saad of the Gallup News Service in her analysis of a poll taken last month.
Gallup asked Americans how worried they are about seven weather events tied to climate change including hurricanes, droughts, rising ocean levels, tropical diseases, and species extinction.
"Generally speaking, not much more than one-third of Americans are 'very worried' about any of the seven effects of global warming measured in the survey," says Ms. Saad. "However, a solid majority are at least 'somewhat worried' about nearly all of them."
At the same time, Gallup finds, Americans by a wide margin – 58 percent to 34 percent – think "the government should put a higher priority on protecting the environment than on increasing energy production." Even though 92 percent think the energy situation in the United States is "serious" (of whom 37 percent say "very serious"), those surveyed favor energy conservation over production by 64-26 percent.
"A lot more people seem willing to go the extra mile, spending a few dollars to help the environment," says Steve Haskins, a Williamstown, Mass., home builder, who's seen a rapid increase in the numbers of requests for sustainable building practices. "Concern about climate is driving it. But it's also cost of energy and cost to heat the house."
Corporate boardrooms are getting the message, too. "There's been a dramatic shift in the business community's attitude toward the environment," says Dan Esty, director of the Yale Center. "Rather than seeing environmental issues as a set of costs to bear, regulation to follow, and risks to manage, companies have begun to focus on the upside, recognizing that society's desire for action on climate change, in particular, will create a huge demand for reducing carbon-content products."
This year, April 22, the annual day to tout personal and community greenness, has a new emphasis for many people: global warming and its predicted effects on Mother Earth.
Around the country and around the world, a batch of recent opinion surveys show swelling public interest in and concern about climate change.
There is "a significant shift in public attitudes toward the environment and global warming [with] fully 83 percent of Americans now saying global warming is a 'serious' problem, up from 70 percent in 2004," reports the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy.
"The last six months have been the most rapid period of change in public awareness and attitudes on climate change that I've ever seen," says William Moomaw, a Tufts University climate expert and coauthor of the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-sponsored group of scientists.
Demand for climate-change briefings he's delivered for the past five years have jumped in the past year, says Dr. Moomaw. Audiences who were once polite are now actively engaged.
Do Your Part to Make a Difference!
· Encouraging your family to recycle on a regular basis is a good way to help the Earth!
· Switching to energy-efficient light bulbs in your house helps to reduce the effects of global warming.
· Every glass bottle you recycle saves enough energy to run a TV for an hour and a half, while recycling an aluminum can saves enough energy to run your TV for three hours!
· Turn out the lights when you leave a room - unless someone's still in there!
· Use re-usable containers for you school lunches and snack
· Plant a tree to replenish the earth. I recently visited a huge magnolia tree my grandmother and I planted 40 years ago at our old home. I recalled every detail of that long-ago day and felt a strong connection with the graceful beauty of that tree. If tree planting isn't feasible where you live, consider donating to a tree-planting organization. Sons of David Foundation is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to planting, maintaining, and protecting as many indigenous trees as possible worldwide. Find out more at www.paulownianow.org
Nature restores our sense of peace and allows us to feel life touching us--it soothes and nourishes our spirits and sometimes frightens us with its power. We make this gift available to our children as we teach them to become respectful of the earth, to walk with awareness, to recycle, and to leave no destructive record of their visit. The natural world is our perpetual, yet ever-changing link with the universe. God, nature, and child all share the same space, connected in the powerful web of life. All parts of the web have importance and purpose. Celebrate Earth Day as an opportunity to become reacquainted with our glorious Mother Earth. You and your child will be blessed by the effort.
A Party for the Earth!
Planet Earth has been around for a very long time. Some call the planet "Mother Earth". This is a good name because the Earth provides shelter and food for our survival, just as a mother protects and provides for her children. Even though the earth is tough and sturdy, it is also fragile.
The Earth's "ecosystems" (ekko-sis-tems) help it to stay in balance. Imagine a picture puzzle that has been put together. The person who has the puzzle can dust it off and take care of it and it will be like new for a long time. But if the puzzle is taken apart and put back together too many times, pieces of it will be torn and bent and probably smudged. Some pieces might even be lost, and then the picture wouldn't be the same at all.
When something damages one part of our ecosystems, it hurts the other parts.
When any living thing on Earth is having problems surviving and continuing its species, it is endangered. If the problems are not solved, there is a chance that it might become extinct. When something becomes extinct, it means that it doesn't exist anymore. Over the years, many mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, insects and plants have become extinct. Quite a few are on the endangered list now. Could there ever come a time when Earth becomes extinct?
Earth has always been a natural environment but, through the years, it has had to put up with what mankind's progress has done to it. Factory smokestacks pour pollution into the air; cars and other vehicles add even more fumes into the atmosphere; waste materials get dumped here and there and everywhere; and animals and other living things lose their habitats because construction needs to take place in order to keep up with the needs of a growing population.
We have taken a natural environment and have been turning it into an un-natural one. But we can't stop progress and we know the world's population is going to get larger. However, what mankind CAN do is find better ways to help the Earth survive along with us. We have been depending on this planet for decade after decade and century after century. Now it seems that it is depending on us to make better choices and find better answers. That's what Earth Day is all about. It is a party for Mother Earth. It is also a chance to discover what each of us can do to help her stay strong and healthy.
"Let every individual and institution now think and act as a responsible trustee of Earth, seeking choices in ecology, economics and ethics that will provide a sustainable future, eliminate pollution, poverty and violence, awaken the wonder of life and foster peaceful progress in the human adventure." (Earth Trustee Formula, International Earth Day Site)
“Man is the only species which can save another species from extinction” (David W. Morris)
