An environmental observance held on April 22 that promotes conservation, environmental awareness, and action through teach-ins, cleanups, and demonstrations worldwide.
“Gaylord Nelson recruited Denis Hayes to organize the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, which drew an estimated 20 million Americans.
Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson conceived Earth Day after the January 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, adapting the anti-war campus teach-in to the environment. He recruited activist Denis Hayes as national coordinator and named Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey his co-chair, and the first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, drew an estimated 20 million Americans.
On a Wednesday in the spring of 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans walked out of offices, schools, and homes for a single environmental demonstration. That was roughly one in ten people in the country at the time.
Encyclopaedia Britannica calls it the largest single-day protest in American history. What it became is now routine: a worldwide date marked by cleanups, teach-ins, and tree plantings every April 22.
What is easy to forget is how unlikely that turnout was, and how deliberately it was built to cross party lines rather than divide along them.
DEALS & OFFERS
Earth Day ran on April 22. Here’s who celebrated with offers this year.
A U.S. senator from Wisconsin had been worrying about pollution for years. Gaylord Nelson saw the spill and its aftermath, and he kept turning over how to make the public and Congress care at the same time.
The answer came from an unlikely source. Flying back east, Nelson read a magazine article about the anti-Vietnam-War teach-ins spreading across college campuses, according to the U.S. Senate Historical Office.
He decided the teach-in model could work for the environment. The plan was a national day of education on college campuses, scaled outward to everyone else.
Nelson, a Democrat, did not keep the project to one side. He recruited a young activist named Denis Hayes to run it, and he named Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican congressman, as his co-chair.
Hayes built a national staff of 85 and chose April 22, a weekday that fell between spring break and final exams, to catch the most students. The name they settled on, Earth Day, drew immediate press.
The turnout reshaped the politics of the issue almost at once. By the end of 1970, the first Earth Day had helped spur the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air Act, with the Clean Water Act following in 1972.
In 1990, Hayes organized a global edition that, by EarthDay.org's count, mobilized 200 million people in 141 countries. Earth Day has been international ever since, and in 2009 the United Nations gave April 22 a second name: International Mother Earth Day. ]]>
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TIMELINE
My primary objective in planning Earth Day was to show the political leadership of the Nation that there was broad and deep support for the environmental movement.
WHY THIS DAY MATTERS
A diffuse public concern got one date lawmakers could not ignore.
The months around the first Earth Day saw the creation of the EPA and the Clean Air Act, with the Clean Water Act following in 1972. The observance gave a diffuse public concern a single, visible date that lawmakers could not ignore.
What began as a U.S. event went global in 1990 and is now marked across much of the world. EarthDay.org describes Earth Day as one of the largest secular observances on the planet.
In 2009 the UN General Assembly proclaimed April 22 International Mother Earth Day. That gave the grassroots American date a formal place on the international calendar.
GOOD TO KNOW
A long-running rumor claims April 22 was chosen to honor Vladimir Lenin's birthday. Snopes rates the claim false; the date was set to fall between spring break and final exams.
Democrat Gaylord Nelson named conservation-minded Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey as Earth Day's co-chair, a deliberate move to keep the cause from becoming a partisan one.
On April 22, 2016, the Paris climate agreement opened for signature at UN Headquarters, where 175 countries signed on the first day.
Peace activist John McConnell pushed a separate Earth Day for the first day of spring, March 21. The April 22 version is the one that took hold.
The roughly 20 million participants in 1970 amounted to about one in ten Americans, on 2,000 college campuses and at 10,000 schools.
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Earth Day is observed on April 22 every year, in the United States and internationally.
COLOPHON
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