By Craig Baird
This past week, people all over the world got together to celebrate Earth Day, one of the more well-known environmental days where we spend a day thinking about what the Earth provides for us on a daily basis.
However, while many people know that Earth Day is the day you show appreciation for the Earth, they may not know how Earth Day came about, or the history behind it.
For Layla and myself, Earth Day holds a special place. It was Earth Day 2008 when we organized a large Earth Day event in our former home of Rossland, B.C. It was also the day we started blogging every single day for an entire year about green issues. We completed Our Green Year on Earth Day this year and the entire process left our lives completely changed.
Earth Day was created in 1969 by peace activist John McConnell. That first year it was a small affair and it was not until 1970 when Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin announced that the implementation of a full scale Earth Day across the United States and the Earth.
Earth Day 1970 had the goal of promoting a healthy and sustainable environment and roughly 20 million Americans took part. What made the concept of Earth Day so unique was that it brought together all forms of environmentalists, from those that fought oil spills and polluting factories, to those that campaigned against loss of habitat and animal extinctions.
The Blue Marble
By 1990, Earth Day had become a large event with over 200 million people participating in 141 countries around the world. That year, the event got a big boost as recycling efforts increased worldwide and it helped fuel movement at the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit.
Earth Day continues to grow beyond its humble origins. In 2007, one billion people participated in Earth Day from nearly every country on Earth. Today, Earth Day is the ONLY event celebrated simultaneously across the Earth by people of all backgrounds, classes, faiths and nationalities. Numbering in the billions now for participates, it is a truly worldwide event that continues to gain steam going into the future.
What does Earth Day mean to you? For many it is just another day, but for some it is an important day of recognizing how good we have it on this planet. Everything we need is here and it is the only home we have. For Layla and myself, Earth Day 2008 was the chance to take the principles we learned from Earth Day, and apply them every day throughout our entire lives.
Happy belated Earth Day everyone!
Filed under: Environment History
