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Mythic Holiday:
Earth Day
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EARTH DAY

Last year, we started something big. Planet-sized big. We demanded real action on climate change and world leaders came together to create the Paris Agreement to stop the crisis.

Now it’s time to build on this victory. Earth Day, April 22, was the first day that countries could sign on to the Paris Agreement. On that day, leaders from 175 nations came together at the UN to sign the agreement and publicly committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It may have been the most important Earth Day ever. Because each signature takes us one step closer to the agreement taking effect all around the world – and one giant step closer to a safe and sustainable future for the planet we call home.
DATABASES
Last year, we started something big. Planet-sized big. We demanded real action on climate change and world leaders came together to create the Paris Agreement to stop the crisis. Now it’s time to build on this victory. Earth Day, April 22, was the first day that countries could sign on to the Paris Agreement. On that day, leaders from 175 nations came together at the UN to sign the agreement and publicly committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. It may have been the most important Earth Day ever. Because each signature takes us one step closer to the agreement taking effect all around the world – and one giant step closer to a safe and sustainable future for the planet we call home.
Mother Earth is clearly urging a call to action. Nature is suffering. Australian fires, heat records and the worst locust invasion in Kenya. Now we face COVID -19, a worldwide health pandemic link to the health of our ecosystem. Climate change, man-made changes to nature as well as crimes that disrupt biodiversity, such as deforestation, land-use change, intensified agriculture and livestock production or the growing illegal wildlife trade, can increase contact and the transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans (zoonotic diseases) like COVID-19. From one new infection disease that emerges in humans every 4 months, 75% of these emerging diseases come from animals, according to UN Environment. This shows the close relationships between human, animal and environmental health.
By the early 1960s, Americans were becoming aware of the effects of pollution on the environment. Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestseller Silent Spring raised the specter of the dangerous effects of pesticides on the American countryside. Later in the decade, a 1969 fire on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River shed light on the problem of chemical waste disposal. Until that time, protecting the planet’s natural resources was not part of the national political agenda, and the number of activists devoted to large-scale issues such as industrial pollution was minimal. Factories pumped pollutants into the air, lakes and rivers with few legal consequences. Big, gas-guzzling cars were considered a sign of prosperity. Only a small portion of the American population was familiar with–let alone practiced–recycling.
This year marked the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Let’s make 2020 a year of energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to create a new plan of action for our planet. Earth Day 2020 can be the catalyst that galvanizes an unparalleled global collaboration.
In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later a United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day".
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