The world celebrates the Earth
Thirty-nine years ago this April, a new American holiday was born. A child of the 1960s, Earth Day began, perhaps not surprisingly, as a teach-in. A very large teach-in: On April 22, 1970, more than 20 million Americans gathered in parks, streets and classrooms across the country to learn about and bring attention to the damage being inflicted upon the planet.
True to its name, Earth Day has since gone global. From Bonn to Buenos Aires, cities around the world have watched their own Earth Day traditions grow. Today, both the list of cities and the size of the celebrations is expanding, to the point that there are almost as many ways to celebrate the holiday as there are cities on a world map.
“Earth Day is celebrated by more than one billion people from all faiths and nationalities, making it the largest secular civic holiday in the world,” says Kathleen Rogers, president of the Earth Day Network, which coordinates Earth Day events worldwide. “The Network now has a global reach with a network of more than 17,000 partners and organizations in 174 countries.”
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