Earthday

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Earthday

Earth Day
Earth Day is April 22. Earth Day is most often observed by the media, hundreds of local groups and noted on calendars on April 22. Many people also observe Earth Week and Earth Month. Since most events and festivals need to take place on a weekend, Earth Day is observed on the weekends before and after April 22. Others also observe it on March 21, the Vernal Equinox or on World Environment Day, June 6. Remember, that really, every day is an Earth Day - we just need to live our lives that way.
History of Earth Day
For years prior to Earth Day it had been troubling to me that the critical matter of the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of our country. The President, the Congress, the economic power structure of the nation, and the press paid almost no attention to this issue, which is of such staggering import to our future. It was clear that until we somehow got this matter into the political arena, until it became a part of the national political dialogue, not much would ever be achieved. The puzzling challenge was to think up some dramatic event that would focus national attention on the environment. Finally, in 1963 an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to get the environment into the political limelight once and for all.
That idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give national visibility to this issue by going on a nationwide conservation tour, spelling out in dramatic language the serious and deteriorating condition of our environment, and proposing a comprehensive agenda to begin addressing the problem. No President had ever made such a tour, and I was satisfied this would finally force the issue onto the nation's political agenda. The President like the idea and began his conservation tour in the fall of 1963. Senators Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, Joe Clark and I accompanied the President on the first leg of his trip to Pennsylvania, Wisconsin,, and Minnesota. For many reasons the tours didn't achieve what I had hoped for - it did not succeed in making the environment a national political issue. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.
While the President's tour was a disappointment, I continued to hope for some idea that would thrust the environment into the political mainstream. Six years would pass before the idea for Earth Day occurred to me in late July 1969, while on a conservation speaking tour out West.
At the time there was...

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