Category:Earth Day

SJS/GreenPolicy360 Siterunner: On the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, a beginning of green ideals and ideas emerged in a serious way... Today Earth Day continues on as a movement and a political cause. Now we are a diverse mix, across the globe, employing the Internet with many voices, colors, ages, especially young people joining in. We continue on year after year, decade after decade.... We are strongly confronting and working to solve our generation's existential challenges. Reaching across our home planet, touching and interacting with planet citizens, looking to share solutions to pressing problems and challenges.

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Environmentalism took on new forms and shapes with ideas that became a legal platform, a first generation of environmental laws that would go worldwide. A new "counterculture" with youthful vision and organizing added their voices and stood up to create the beginnings of a global environmental movement.

With a goal of protecting life, a new environmental movement began to grow, a "Whole Earth" vision seen for the first time from space in 1968 with the iconic Apollo 8 Earthrise image and a very real 'sense' of our common responsibility for the future of the planet. Students were 'first-movers' who spoke of the existential threat of nuclear war and environmental disaster, and need to 'become' far-reaching with a new vision. Realizations grew internationally that we had created weapons capable of ending humanity and most all life of earth -- and we needed to change this nuclear doomsday threat. Protests and 'teach ins', led by students, and drawing in politicians, communities, media, news with pamphlets, books, music, art and demonstrations crossed continents with new symbols, peace symbols, environmental and eco-awareness.

The threads of teach-ins led directly to and the first Earth Day in 1970 as students expanded counterculture with action. Across the U.S., a first Earth Day of teach-ins began as a student-initiated movement on college campuses including your siterunner's college where we proposed an environment and peace action day to Senator Nelson, who we met as we organized the national Moratorium and who worked with us to make an Earth Day a national political event. At the University of Southern California, our student peace activists continued 1969's anti-war moratorium sharing a positive vision of what was needed -- environmental protection, economic and social justice, new priorities added to the nation's agenda. The work spread quickly. Earth Day's teach-ins reached out to students globally. A worldwide environmental movement became a real and growing political force...

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"I am convinced that the same concern the youth of this nation took in changing this nation's priorities on the war in Vietnam and on civil rights can be shown for the problems of the environment. Successful teach-ins on all campuses on the same day will have a dramatic impact on the environmental conscience of the nation. They will be immensely effective as an educational effort in arousing public opinion..."

https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Environmental_movement

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Earth Day -- April 22, 1970

April 22, 2020 -- 50 Years On

Bioneers interview with Hispanic activist Arturo Sandoval:

You were part of Denis Hayes’ team that produced the first Earth Day in 1970. What was that experience like?

ARTURO: It was my first time organizing on a national level. I worked with a very bright team. It was lots of work. It was very exhilarating. It completely exceeded anything we hoped to achieve. It was like holding onto the tail of the tiger. We were basically just trying to stay out of the way of a freight train coming down the tracks because the response to the first Earth Day was so overwhelming. It was huge. It was just unbelievable, and took everything we had to just try to connect the dots and get information out to the people and not get in their way.

Earth Right Now

○ "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ..." -- NASA Original Mission Statement (1958)

○ "You can manage only what you can measure." -- NASA, Earth Right Now Science Program