Ecology Now
Earth First
Offset, ca. 1970
United States
Earth Day was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (Democrat, Wisconsin) as an environmental teach-in held on April 22, 1970. Approximately 20 million Americans participated and this date marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.
Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. The organizers 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.
Earth Day 2010 coincides with the World People’s Conference on Climate Change held in Cochabamba, Bolivia and with the International Year of Biodiversity.
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