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Earth Day is every day
The United Nations works with organizers of both events choosing to hold it own Earth Day Ceremony on the March date. As evidenced by the U.N. and noted earlier, every day is Earth Day for those who take their environmental citizenship seriously. This year marks the 40th Anniversary of April’s Earth Day. When initially launched four decades ago, little could the first 20 million participants envision that by the New Millennium, Earth Day would be celebrated by hundreds of millions of people in 184 countries. (Events in 2000 ranged from Gabron, Africa, where a “talking drum” carried the Earth Day message from village to village, to the grassy National Mall in Washington, D.C., where thousands of people gathered to mark the occasion.) According to facts on the Earth Day Network website, today, “More than 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities making it the largest secular civic event in the world.” Reporting that Earth Day’s ultimate goal is a healthy, sustainable, global environment, Earth Day Network is encouraging unprecedented participation in the ongoing Green Generation Campaign™. Launched in 2009 in anticipation of this year’s Earth Day, the Campaign hopes to generate A Billion Acts of Green™ throughout the globe on the weekend immediately prior to April 22. Produced with the help of Earth Day Network and local community organizations and governments, the Campaign’s 2010 projects will focus on climate change solutions such as tree planting, energy efficiency retrofits, water protection, urban gardens and forest restoration. Activities are planned to help cities and organizations streamline their energy needs, and ‘green up’ their communities. |
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While every day is Earth Day for those who take environmental issues seriously, there are, in fact, two official Earth Day dates observed by the global community—April 22, and approximately one month earlier at the time of the equinox, on or around March 20. The April date was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-Wisconsin) and first organized as a national event in 1970. The March observance was founded by peace activist John McConnell in 1969.
