Earth Day 2010: A Turning Point to the Earth

Forty years after the first Earth Day, the world is in greater peril than ever. While climate change is the greatest challenge of our time, it also presents the greatest opportunity – an unprecedented opportunity to build a healthy, prosperous, clean energy economy now and for the future.

Earth Day 2010 can be a turning point to advance climate policy, energy efficiency, renewable energy and green jobs. Earth Day Network is galvanizing millions who make personal commitments to sustainability.

Earth Day 2010 is a pivotal opportunity for individuals, corporations and governments to join together and create a global green economy. Join the more than one billion people in 190 countries that are taking action for Earth Day.

Earth Day has come a long way since its relatively humble origins forty years ago. US senator Gaylord Nelson was very environmentally-conscious, which was fairly rare for that time.

He decided that an environmental teach-in was in order, and wanted to make a statement to the American government about how concerned people were about the environment. He was astonished by how quickly people and officials, including New York City mayor John V. Lindsay, got on board with the idea.

Nelson consulted his friend, legendary advertising copywriter Julian Koenig, about what to call the event. Drawing from deep within his creativity, Koenig recommended calling it “Earth Day”, and thus began a holiday that many say gave birth to the modern environmentalism movement.

It was set as April 22nd every year (one of the few holidays to hold a fixed date in the United States, in fact; most are moved to the closest Monday for scheduling convenience) in part because that’s Koenig’s birthday (rhymes with “Earth Day” – genius!). Since 1970 Earth Day has grown into a global event with over half a billion participants each year recently, and has come to encompass many different aspects of environmentalism and sustainability.

Earth Day is not without its detractors, however. Even twenty years ago, during Earth Day 1990, some critics claimed that Earth Day was serving as more of an excuse for people to vent their environmental stress, and that it was as a poor substitute for real environmental action. “Worn out by weeks of build-up and an accompanying media blitz,” Time Magazine reasoned, “many people will return to business as usual on Monday, hoping not to hear the E word again for weeks.” While it’s a bit trivializing to hear the environment referred to as “the E-word”, there is some logic to this idea.