Earth Day - 22 April

todd from EarthDiverse

EarthDiverse welcomes Earth Day, an annual event on 22 April that celebrates and demonstrates our support for environmental preservation and protection on a global scale.

A bit of history: In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honour the Earth and the concept of peace, to be held on 21 March 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by UN Secretary General U Thant. A month later, US Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on 22 April 1970, and hired Denis Hayes to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day". Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire US. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single-day protest in human history.

In 1990, Denis and others made it international and organised events in 141 countries. On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the US, UK, China, and 120 other countries. This signing satisfied a key requirement for the historic draft climate protection treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris. On Earth Day 2020, over 100 million people around the world observed the 50th anniversary in what is being referred to as the largest online mass mobilisation in history.

Join us in celebrating and protecting our amazing home, our Mother, Planet Earth. It’s the only one we have!