Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Happy Earth Day!

Earth Day was founded in 1970 by Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, who proposed the first nationwide environmental gathering "to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda. " "It was a gamble," he recalls, "but it worked."

On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums in support of a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies to raise awareness about oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife.

Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.

As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy. Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the Internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 rolled around, 5,000 environmental groups around the world were on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. 

Celebrate Earth Day 2009 by finding simple ways you can go green.  Ride your bike to work, recycle, reduce waste by watching out for excessive packaging, bring your own reusable cloth bags with you to the grocery store instead of using more paper or plastic, insulate your pipes and water heater, fix leaky faucets, turn off the lights when you leave a room, use the power-save feature on your computer so it powers down after a period of inactivity, donate your old clothes for someone else to reuse, what other ways can you think of?

For more information on how you can celebrate Earth Day, visit the EPA's website at http://www.epa.gov/earthday

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