An Interesting Year

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Today April 22 as every year is Earth Day. The interesting year I am talking about is 1970. That year brought about the very first Earth Day. That year also saw the death of Jimi Hendrix, the last Beatles album was recorded and Simon and Garfunkel came out with “Bridge Over Troubled Water”. Those were troubled times and the Vietnam War raged on while students did their thing protesting. Even pollution was on the rise. So you could say 1970 came with the good and the bad. The good of course was the idea of Earth Day. Its founder is Gaylord Nelson who was then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin. He had seen the disaster of the massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California in 1969. He was inspired by the student anti-war movement and considered the fact that all that energy might possibly be infused to make the public start becoming more aware of air and water pollution. The date April 22 was chosen because it fell between Spring Break and Final Exams and so he began promoting events across the country. On that day in 1970 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks and auditoriums in order to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment with rallies from coast to coast. As a result of which Earth Day worked even though there were doubts that it would. In 1990 Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and bringing environmental issue out into the open. 1992 saw the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. President Clinton awarded Senator Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 which is the highest honor ever given to civilians in the U.S. He earned it as being the founder of Earth Day. Earth Day 2000 made use of the Internet to organize activists and also featured a drum chain that went from village to village in Gabon, Africa. A huge crowd came together on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. for a First Amendment Rally. 2020 will see the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day. What do you think of Earth Day?