The History of Earth Day

IN 1969, US Senator Gaylord Nelson, intended to combine the energy of student anti-war rallies with a rising public understanding about air and water pollution after seeing the tragedy of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. He approached the national media with the notion of holding a teach-in on college campuses.

He also enlisted the help of Denis Hayes, a young activist, to organise the campus teach-ins, and chose April 22, a weekday between Spring Break to maximise student involvement. They called it Earth Day, which garnered national media interest and quickly spread across the country.

Earth Day motivated 20 million Americans – at the time, 10% of the entire US population – 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.

In 1990, a number of environmental leaders approached Hayes about organising another large environmental campaign. This year, Earth Day went worldwide, mobilising 200 million people in 141 nations and bringing environmental problems to the forefront of global debate.

Earth Day 1990 provided a significant boost to recycling activities throughout the world, paving the stage for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It also inspired President Bill Clinton to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the highest civilian honour in the United States – to Senator Nelson for his role as the founder of Earth Day.

Today, Earth Day is generally regarded as the world’s largest secular celebration, with over a billion people participating each year as a day of action to improve human behaviour and generate global, national, and local policy changes. The struggle for a clean environment is now more urgent than ever, as the effects of climate change become apparent day by day.

Every year, Earth Day provides a day of education about environmental challenges impacting our globe. Demonstrations on Earth Day also assist to communicate to our elected officials how essential environmental action is to us, their citizens.

Earth Day provides us with a day each year to think on the importance of the planet’s health and what we can all do to assist guarantee that health.