The Earth Day is the name given to two different annual observances that are intended to raise awareness about environmental issues and problems and inspire people to take personal action to address them.
In the United States, most people celebrate the Earth Day on April 22, but there is another celebration that predates by approximately a month and is celebrated internationally. It was the brainchild of John McConnell, a newspaper publisher and influential community activist, who proposed the idea of a global holiday called Earth Day at the UNESCO Conference on the Environment in 1969. When McConnell first came up with the idea for the event, he envisioned it as a day for celebrating the wonder of life on the earth.
The first Earth Day celebration took place on March 21, 1970, the vernal equinox that year. At the vernal equinox (always March 20 or March 21), night and day are the same lengths everywhere on the earth.Similarly, it is the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, the first day of autumn in the southern hemisphere—because it is a day of renewal. McConnell believed that the Earth Day should be a time of equilibrium when people could put aside their differences and recognise their common need to preserve the earth’s resources.
The Earth Day came into public acceptance as an annual observance to remind the people of their shared responsibility as environmental stewards.Similarly, on February 26, 1971, UN Secretary-General U Thant signed a proclamation saying that the United Nations would celebrate the Earth Day annually on the vernal equinox, thereby officially establishing the March date as the international Earth Day.
In his Earth Day statement on March 21, 1971, U Thant said, “May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful spaceship earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life.” The United Nations continues to celebrate the Earth Day each year by ringing the Peace Bell at the UN headquarters in New York at the precise moment of the vernal equinox.
But in the USA on April 22, 1970, the Environmental Teach-In held a nationwide day of environmental education and activism that it called the Earth Day. The event was inspired and organised by environmental activist Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin. Nelson wanted to show other US politicians that there was widespread public support for a political agenda centered on environmental issues. There by Nelson began organising the event from his Senate office, assigning two staff members to work on it, but soon more space and people were needed.
John Gardner, founder of Common Cause, donated office space. Nelson selected Denis Hayes, a Harvard University student, to coordinate the Earth Day activities and gave him a staff of volunteer college students to help.
The event was wildly successful, sparking the Earth Day celebrations at thousands of colleges, universities, schools and communities all across the United States. An October 1993 article in American Heritage Magazine proclaimed, “…April 22, 1970, the Earth Day was…one of the most remarkable happenings in the history of democracy… 20 million people demonstrated their support… American politics and public policy would never be the same again.”
Following the Earth Day celebration inspired by Nelson, which demonstrated widespread grassroots support for environmental legislation, Congress passed many important environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as laws to protect wilderness areas. The Environmental Protection Agency was created within three years after the Earth Day 1970.
But, a big question comes to mind is why we Indian celebrate the American event during a hot Indian summerIJ May be it’s because we are conscious citizens and we understand how to behave with the beautiful gift planet earth. We also understand that our earth is not in that same shape what it used to be when it was born. We develop a sense that somehow knowingly we shirked our responsibility of keeping our earth safe in order to stay healthy and alive; perhaps in our run for development we forgot that we do have a responsibility on saving the earth.
Over last four decades, human being mercilessly utilised resources and depleted the products of earth which ultimately is showing its result in severe problems like depletion of the ozone layer, death of rivers and water bodies, rise in temperature much before arrival of summer and no advent of spring in our annual calendar etc. In our journey for industrialisation and mining, we have created heavy amount of deforestation, depletion of ground water and pollutions of all sorts.
The ice at the poles has started to melt due to the rise in earth’s temperature at the global level but we too have seen unprecedented rise of temperature and rainfall everywhere. This is just the beginning of what could be in store. No doubt, we have gone far away in spoiling our mother earth but we have not reached the end. So, days like the Earth Day remind us of correcting our lifestyle for betterment of the earth or the future generations.
The time is knocking our door to correct ourselves and initiate climate positive actions to ensure our action does not hamper the earth. We can begin with small steps like planting trees, adding green energy to our existing consumption, using bicycle for at least smaller distances, ensuring public transport in our day- to-day travel, switching off lights when unnecessary and less dependency on use of petrol. Similarly, the Government must incentivize access to green energy, public transport system, non motorised transport, zero waste management, recycling and ensure that our water bodies no more carry sewer.
These steps may look like small steps but when a billion in this country will practice, certainly we will see some positive changes. Some actions are visible in piecemeal i.e. introduction of CNG vehicles in New Delhi, public transport system in Bangalore, Bus Rapid Transit System in Ahmedabad, Metro Rail in New Delhi and restoration of water bodies in Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad etc.
(Dr Rout is an urban planner and cofounder of local Governance Network, who can be reached at piyush.rout@lgnet.in)