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

March 29th- Live Blogging Earth Hour: Because Someone Had To

We’re live blogging Earth Hour.

8:10 pm- Ahh…. It’s nice to have the Green Blogosphere all to myself. Treehugger, EcoGeek, GroovyGreen, and WorldChanging are all dark and abandoned ghost towns. I’m sitting in the ol’ living room with all the lights in the house on watching an hour long marathon of Cops. I’m warming my feet with a plug in heater and have a few pieces of toast in the toaster. I’ll make some hot chocolate in the microwave in a bit.

8:18- A good Cops so far, they just took out a guy running from them. Looks like it’s time to bust some crack heads. Stupid cops.

8:22- Nice- only four and a half minutes on high in the microwave to heat up a big ass mug of half and half hot chocolate.

8:25- I just turned up the radio downstairs real loud, every kilowatt helps. You can barely hear it with the door shut.

8:27- Just noticed an outside light that I had missed. Flicked it on.

8:30- First Cops is over, one more to go.

8:32- Plugging in the Foreman Grill, it’s grilled cheese and Fluff time!

8:34- Nice, a good looking lady cop in Sacramento. She’s got the taser!

8:35- We’ve got a chase on our hands!

8:36- Oh yeah, I’ve seen this one on Hulu. The guy had a good hiding spot (in the recycling bin), but the damn dog tracked him down.

8:40- Awesome! I found a big ass light and disco ball in the basement from back in the college days. I wonder how much juice that sucker pulls. I hope everyone in the dark is having a good break away from the grid. I’m thinking of you and doing my part to use the extra energy now flooding the system. I’m helping to stabilize the load- I’m a damn hero.

8:43- Now is a good time to plug in all my rechargeable batteries.

8:44- I love seeing rich white guys get busted on Cops. I also love warm clothes right out of the dryer. Popped in another load to wash and dry.

8:48- The floodlights I plugged in outside is melting down into the snow. I can’t stand how cops just slime their way into searching you and your car. Everyone should see Busted: A Citizen’s Guide to Surviving Police Encounters.

8:50- It’ll be nice when the rest of the world plugs back in. It’s lonely in here.

8:53- Blender is out- mmmm…. super thick milkshake.

8:54- Suspicious Vehicle in Broward County. The guy isn’t getting off the cell phone or rolling down the window.

8:56- Well it’s was a great hour live blogging Earth Hour. Going to make some coffee to ice up for tomorrow in the last few minutes.

8:59- That’s it for me tonight, shutting down and going to sleep. I’ve got to wake up early to go to my second job at Wal-Mart. How else do you think I’m going to be able to pay the power bill from today?

9:01 pm- Welcome back everyone.