College Students Amped Up the Eco-Activism on Earth Day

The Earth Day Network accomplished one big goal last Tuesday: flooding the congressional switchboard with calls from people who wanted to encourage lawmakers to enact eco-friendly measures. With the help of 1,000 college students at 1,000 campuses nationwide, the Earth Day Network made sure that our nation’s leaders heard the voices of people who care about the planet. From the Washington Times:

“We’re really excited about this because Congress keeps saying they don’t hear from the American public on climate change,” said Kathleen Rogers, president of Earth Day Network, which bills itself as an eco-activism group connecting some 17,000 organizations in 174 countries. “The [presidential] candidates are not being asked about climate change. Climate change is the biggest threat to humanity that we’ve ever faced.” Rogers said she wasn’t worried about the switchboard being overwhelmed by the calls. She said she was assured by the office handling congressional calls that staff could handle 1.3 million calls during a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. period. “They’re very, very competent, and they’re ready. We’re gong to help them as much as we can in advance,” Rogers said. “Our intention is really, really not to shut them down. If things went nuts, which we don’t expect them to, their operators are dreamboats. They consider their jobs part of the democratic process. If there’d be any problems, it’d be with the phone lines, not with the switchboard.”

Historically, college students have always been known for doing everything a little more vibrantly than the rest of the population, from activism to drunken debauchery, but lately it seems like more and more people are working hard to instigate change, and are more dedicated than ever. Keep it up, college students! God knows America needs your enthusiasm. Link [Washington Times] Photo credit: Flickr user GirlReporter

Stumbleupon Going Green for Earth Day: Turn Your Thumbs Up Into Trees!

If you’ve been thinking about checking out Stumbleupon but haven’t gotten around to it yet, do it now! On Earth Day, April 22nd, they’re teaming up with Tiki Barber (former New York Giants running back and current Today Show correspondent) to plant a tree for every thumbs-up you give.

If you’ve been living under a rock, perhaps, or just aren’t hip to what all the cool kids are doing on the internet, Stumbleupon is an awesome tool that basically learns your tastes and interests and helps you discover things that fit. It’s a browser tool bar that allows you to give a ‘thumbs up’ to sites you like (and write up reviews, if you’re so inclined) and a ‘thumbs down’ to those you don’t. When you hit the ‘Stumble!’ button, it brings you random web pages based on your likes and dislikes. It’s a great way to literally ‘stumble upon’ things you may never have otherwise seen.

Sign up and get started today if you want to participate on Earth Day, so you can set up your ‘home page’ and get the hang of stumbling. Take this chance to give lots of thumbs down to greenwashing sites, and thumbs up to the good ones (like, oh, I don’t know, US!)

This way, if you end up spending most of your day in front of a computer instead of out actually planting trees yourself, you won’t feel so guilty! A win-win all around.

Link [ecorazzi] + [Stumbeupon]

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Earth Day Awesomeness, from Conception to 2008

Smug Alert! It’s Earth Day, people!

Obviously, if you’re a fan of EarthFirst.com, you act as if every day is Earth Day (you do, of course, don’t you?), but that doesn’t mean the symbolism of the holiday isn’t significant to all of us. No, not because we get to go on Smug Alert. Luckily, for the most part, the general public no longer considers Earth Day to be that annoying day that sanctimonious little shits in Greenpeace t-shirts tell everyone else what to do with their pickup trucks and recyclables. More and more people are starting to actually, like, care and stuff.

How’d Earth Day start, after all, in this nation of McDonalds and fossil fuels? Envirolink.org has the scoop straight from the source. Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day, says the idea started back in 1962:

For several years, it had been troubling me that the state of our environment was simply a non-issue in the politics of the country. Finally, in November 1962, an idea occurred to me that was, I thought, a virtual cinch to put the environment into the political “limelight” once and for all. The idea was to persuade President Kennedy to give visibility to this issue by going on a national conservation tour. I flew to Washington to discuss the proposal with Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who liked the idea. So did the President. The President began his five-day, eleven-state conservation tour in September 1963. For many reasons the tour did not succeed in putting the issue onto the national political agenda. However, it was the germ of the idea that ultimately flowered into Earth Day.

Senator Nelson kept on truckin’ for the next seven years, trying to get the message out despite little interest from politicians. The people were starting to get it, though, and what better time than the summer of love, 1969, for it to take off? In September of that year, Senator Nelson announced that the following spring, April 1970, there would be a ‘nationwide grassroots demonstration on behalf of the environment’ and asked everyone to take part. The message spread, people got excited, and the day itself turned out to be a great success. 20 million people demonstrated in thousands of schools and communities nationwide, with Senator Nelson marveling that it ‘organized itself’.

Since then, Earth Day has been celebrated in thousands of different ways all over the world. Many cities center their festivities around local natural wonders and efforts to preserve them, while others take the chance to educate the public about what they can do to be ‘green’. At Earth Day events you can typically find local environmentally friendly retailers, purchase local organic food & beverages, participate in interactive exhibits and enjoy live music.

Of all the Earth Day celebrations, the largest and best known is the nationwide Green Apple Music Festival which actually took place this past weekend (April 18th-20th) in 8 cities around the U.S. including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, Miami, Washington DC & NYC. In Miami, Menudo played. Menudo!

Others who celebrated over the weekend include Tokyo and Barcelona. Buenos Aires and Russia plan to be fashionably late, throwing their own Earth Day bashes on the 26th. Some of the happenings around the globe include awareness of genetic modification of our food, showing off new advances in green technology, cultural performances, and (in America) voter registration.

Sure, there are still people out there that think global warming isn’t real. And there are plenty of trees all over the world, so we’re not going to run out any time soon (eye roll), humans were meant to lord over the earth and everything will just adapt to our gluttony and gross misuse of the amazing natural bounty we’ve been blessed with by God, nature, science or what have you. Right? Uh, no, and that’s why you should take this opportunity to spread the Earth Day love.

So let’s all hold hands and sing: “Come on, people now people now… people driving hybrids people now…” Kidding, kidding. Ride your bike to work, attend a festival in your area, do something good for the earth or at least get outside. Or, you can join us as we live blog Earth Day, all day long! Come on, it will be fun (but you should take a break to go outside at some point, seriously).

Link [Envirolink]

Photo credit: South Park Studios & Wikimedia Commons