Earth Day 2020
2020-Apr-22, Wednesday 04:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mellowtiggerEarth Day is now 50 years old, half a century! Why did Earth Day celebrations begin in 1970 April 22?
The calendar date was chosen partly as a blending with the already familiar Arbor Day in the USA, usually celebrated on the last Friday in April. It was also chosen partly because it was a convenient time to solicit student activists, sometime between spring break and final exams.
The year had its own significance. It was after the USA had witnessed then-unprecedented Santa Barbara oil spill. Also notable, though, it was after the "earthrise" image of our planet taken from Apollo 8 in orbit around the moon. Earth Day finally gained global momentum in 1990. This happened when humanity was put in perspective with Carl Sagan's broadcast of the famous "pale blue dot" image of Earth alone in space, from the Voyager 1 space probe.
Nothing would be the same afterwards. Humanity's home is very small, and we must tend it carefully.
It may seem difficult to celebrate this year, with almost everyone restricted to indoor activity, but there are online options. A Forbes article today, for example, includes some worthwhile options. One of them is a YouTube livecam for Dunn Ranch Prairie preserve in Missouri, belonging to The Nature Conservancy. (I know the guy who helped set up that camera feed.)
Preserving healthy ecosystems grows more urgent due to climate change. We're also seeing an unusually large impact within a much shorter timeframe this year. Some of the worst global outcomes for COVID-19 seem to be in areas with the worst air pollution. The same is true of areas within the USA. This is especially troublesome since we're also learning that air pollution has grown worse in the USA in recent years.
Healthy ecosystems matter. Both long term and short term.
The calendar date was chosen partly as a blending with the already familiar Arbor Day in the USA, usually celebrated on the last Friday in April. It was also chosen partly because it was a convenient time to solicit student activists, sometime between spring break and final exams.
The year had its own significance. It was after the USA had witnessed then-unprecedented Santa Barbara oil spill. Also notable, though, it was after the "earthrise" image of our planet taken from Apollo 8 in orbit around the moon. Earth Day finally gained global momentum in 1990. This happened when humanity was put in perspective with Carl Sagan's broadcast of the famous "pale blue dot" image of Earth alone in space, from the Voyager 1 space probe. Nothing would be the same afterwards. Humanity's home is very small, and we must tend it carefully.
"I think this perspective underscores our responsibility to preserve and cherish that blue dot, the only home we have."
- Carl Sagan
- Carl Sagan
It may seem difficult to celebrate this year, with almost everyone restricted to indoor activity, but there are online options. A Forbes article today, for example, includes some worthwhile options. One of them is a YouTube livecam for Dunn Ranch Prairie preserve in Missouri, belonging to The Nature Conservancy. (I know the guy who helped set up that camera feed.)
Preserving healthy ecosystems grows more urgent due to climate change. We're also seeing an unusually large impact within a much shorter timeframe this year. Some of the worst global outcomes for COVID-19 seem to be in areas with the worst air pollution. The same is true of areas within the USA. This is especially troublesome since we're also learning that air pollution has grown worse in the USA in recent years.
Healthy ecosystems matter. Both long term and short term.