Earth Day 2022. For a healthy, balanced and sustainable environment
Each year, there is only one day when people all over the world get together to celebrate Earth and promote its safeguard – it is April 22, Earth Day. This day was appointed fifty years ago by UN – it is the green event involving the largest number of people.
But why exactly April 22, one month and one day after spring equinox? The day was not chosen by chance. In fact, on April 22 1970 a summoning took place, involving 20 million US citizens who answered to the call of democrat senator Gaylord Nelson, with the aim of underlying the need to maintain our planet’s natural resources. The actual idea of an Earth Day was discussed for the first time in 1962, when, while protest against Vietnam war was growing, Mr Nelson organized a teach-in on the environmental issue involving, among others, Robert Kennedy who gave several lectures on environmental issues in eleven American states the following year. History says that in 1969 environmental issues became urgent in the US, due to the oil spill from Union Oil facilities in California, off the coast of Santa Barbara. An environmental disaster that moved the democrat senator to bring the protection of Earth to the attention not only of the political world, but also of the public opinion. Since, as he declared, “all people have the right to have a healthy, balanced and sustainable environment”. And exactly on April 22, 1970, US mobilized, protesting against environmental degradation.
Actually, the decision to celebrate each year the Earth Day opened the road for the organization of the Summit of United Nations that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – the first world conference of heads of states completely dedicated to the environment. It was an unprecedented event in terms of mediatic impact as well as political decisions.
Today, the Day is celebrated all over the world. Since the beginning of the new Millennium, thanks to Internet, the message has been spread with greater speed and capillarity, thus involving more and more famous people and common citizens and getting to over one billion people attending the events. At the core, the themes we have learned to acknowledge as the urgent ones – a future free from fossil fuels and aimed at renewable sources, the individual responsibility for a sustainable consumption, the development of the green economy and an educational system based on environmental themes.
