Earth Day:Nature needs Nurture

Earth Day, celebrated first in 1970 led by a U.S. senator Gaylord Nelson who proposed 'to shake up the political establishment' in the world's first nationwide environmental protest, has come a long way since and serves as the world's largest secular platform that unifies the East and West, the rich and the poor and the urban and the rural. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, today, the biggest global authority on all issues related to the environment. It also served to provide individual groups at the local, state, national, and global levels with partners that share their values and bridge the gap between concerned citizens and their political leaders.

The late 60's, before the environment was anywhere on anyone's agenda, saw the products of explosive economic development littered everywhere - polluted rivers, smog-filled air, mercury poisoned fish, and acid rain. A series of books called Silent Spring in 1962 and The Population Bomb in 1968 helped mobilize the movement further. Events like oil spills near England in 1967 and Santa Barbara, California in 1968 also underscored the urgency of the issue together with concern about nuclear radiation fallout from above ground testing.

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 when 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy and sustainable environment helped crystallize the concerns being voiced on local platforms with a common denominator and in a big way. The national coordinator of the 1970 Earth Day movement, an undergraduate student by the name of Denis Hayes, and his youthful team organized massive coast-to-coast rallies in the U.S. where thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Senator Nelson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom - the highest honor given to civilians in the U.S. for his role as Earth Day founder. By 1990, Earth Day had gone global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries highlighting the state of the environment on to the world stage, eventually resulting in the United Nations Earth Summit.

'[40 years ago when Earth Day began], knowledge on climate change had not been understood or disseminated on a large scale. Consequently, [Nelson's] focus was rightly on conservation of resources at the local level and means by which environmentally friendly solutions could be developed and implemented by people at the grassroots level,' says Dr. Pachauri, TERI's Director-General and Chairman of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change.

Today, over 1 billion people from 184 countries and 17,000 organizations participate in activities related to Earth Day, making it the largest secular event organized in the world in solidarity with Nature. Earth Day is an opportunity to grab, as is everyday towards a sustainable Earth, while it lasts.