EARTH DAY 2023
Every year on April 22, Earth Day commemorates the 1970 start of the modern day environmental movement. In the decades leading up to the first Earth Day, world was using large volumes of leaded gas in massive and inefficient cars. Industry belched up smoke and muck with no regard for the ramifications of the law or negative headlines. Air pollution was often regarded as the aroma of affluence. Until recently, humanity was generally unaware of environmental problems and how a contaminated environment endangers human health.
The release of Rachel Carson's New York Times bestseller Silent Spring in 1962, however, set the ground for change. The book was a game changer, selling over 500,000 copies in 24 countries and raising public knowledge and care for living beings, the environment, and the inextricable linkages between pollution and public health. Earth Day 1970 would come to give voice to this growing environmental consciousness, bringing environmental problems front and center. Earth Day pushed 20 million Americans — 10% of the entire population of the United States at the time — to take to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to protest the effects of 150 years of industrial progress, which had left a growing legacy of major human health repercussions. Thousands of colleges and universities planned protests against environmental degradation, and there were large marches in cities, towns, and villages from coast to coast.
Source: New York Times cover page, 1970
By the end of 1970, the inaugural Earth Day had resulted in the establishment of the United States Environmental Protection Agency as well as the enactment of other groundbreaking environmental legislation, such as the National Environmental Education Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act was approved by Congress two years later. The Endangered Species Act was approved a year later, followed by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. These rules have saved the lives of millions of men, women, and children, as well as hundreds of species from extinction.
As the year 1990 neared, a number of environmental leaders approached Denis Hayes about organizing another large environmental campaign. This year, Earth Day went worldwide, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 nations and bringing environmental problems to the forefront of global consciousness. Earth Day 1990 provided a significant boost to recycling activities globally, paving the stage for the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
Today, Earth Day is acknowledged as the greatest secular celebration in the world. More than a billion people commemorate it every year as a day of action to modify human behavior and bring about changes to global, national, and local policies. The struggle for a clean environment is becoming more urgent as the effects of climate change become more visible by the day. As public knowledge of our climate issue develops, so does civil society mobilization, which is currently at a fever pitch throughout the world. Disillusioned by the lack of ambition following the approval of the Paris Agreement in 2015, and upset by international environmental sluggishness, communities throughout the world are rising up to demand far stronger action for our planet and future generations.
