Celebrate the Planet

1974 political ad campaign for Senator Nelson

This April brings us two special days which honor and call us to give back to the planet. This Friday, April 22nd is Earth Day. As a society, we have come a long way with regards to environmental protection since the first Earth Day in 1970. At this point in history, the American consciousness was primed to address the issues of smog, litter, unswimmable rivers and lakes and undrinkable water.  The idea sprang from Senator Gaylord Nelson, who used a grass  roots approach to mobilize millions of people who gathered across the nation to speak out about the need to stop destroying and to protect the planet. What is impressive is that this liberal democrat was able to gain the support of a conservative republican congressman, Pete McClosky, who agreed to serve as national co-chair of the event, along with Denis Hayes. During his lifetime he received two awards from the United Nations in recognition of his environmental efforts and in 1995, he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton honoring his legacy of creating the first Earth Day which led to the creation of the Environmental Protection Act, the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act. And although our nation's rivers no longer catch on fire, we are still plagued by the effects of human's adverse impacts to the environment. This has been demonstrated recently with the drinking water contamination issues of Flint, Michigan and with emerging contaminates such as PFOA's which have been detected in wells in the Northeast and elsewhere.

Earth Day has now become an international event and this year's Earth Day theme is Trees for the Earth which has a goal of planting 7.8 billion trees to protect the planet for the effects of climate change. This theme is a great introduction to the second environmental day in April - Arbor Day which is Friday, April 29th. Joining the Arbor Day Foundation is an easy way to reach that 7.8 billion goal since each membership comes with ten free trees. In fact, our yard contains several trees that were received from the Arbor Day Foundation in this manner.
 
 So, check out both the Earth Day and Arbor Day websites and see what you can do to recognize and care for our one and only home, the earth.