(Photo Courtesy of Earth Day Network)

Earth Day 2010 is today! Although I have celebrated Earth Day for several years, I actually never knew the origin of Earth Day, like who originally came up with the idea of Earth Day? Where did this campaign come from? And why is Earth Day so successful today? So this week, we are going to take you on the history train and travel back to see the spark that grew to be Earth Day.

In the 60s, environmental issues had not been fully recognized as a political issue. The political atmosphere in the U.S. during the 60s was particularly intense due to the Vietnam War. During the time, many civil movements and public demonstrations in the U.S. focused on anti-war. In November 1962, Senator Gaylord Nelson had a vision to make environment issues as a political issue by persuading President Kennedy to go on a national conservation tour and by using the Anti-Vietnam War demonstration model called “teach-ins.”  Teach-ins are political discussion forums for college campuses to participate and orient toward actual action on current political affairs. Senator Nelson organized a grass root demonstration on behalf of the environment in 1970.

As soon as news about the grass root demonstration began spreading out, it traveled coast to coast and gathered media and civil society attention. Earth Day got its name from a friend of Senator Nelson, Julian Koenig, whose birthday is on April 22^nd. It occurred to Koenig that Earth Day rhymed with birthday, and thus the name was created. On April 22^nd 1970, the first Earth Day took place in two thousand colleges and universities and hundreds of communities nationwide. The first Earth Day gathered around 20 million Americans and sprouted into action all kinds of advocacy efforts for different environmental issues, including those concerning oil spills, toxic wastes, degradation of natural resources, and pollution from factories and plants.

The environmental teach-in was a huge success. Since 1970, every year, Earth Day has been expanding at a rapid speed-- from on a national scale to an international scale and from millions of people to billions of people. In addition, the United Nations General Assembly in 2009 unanimously adopted the resolution (A/63/L.69) to proclaim April 22^nd as “International Mother Earth Day.”

As what Senator Nelson said, “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.”[1] The success of Earth Day is due to the grass root movement and the involvement of every environmental lover.

To celebrate the 40^th birthday of Earth Day or the” International Mother Earth Day”, you can:

·        Drive campus action on climate

·        Sign the Earth Day 2010 Climate Declaration

·        Join the Climate Rally on the National Mall in Washington, DC (April 25^th)

And of course global debaters, you can always create a creative service project (http://www.thepeoplespeak.org/assets/files/service-project-2010.pdf) to celebrate along with Earth Day. Have a happy Earth Day today!