In the USA Earth day sprung out of the growing environmental awareness of the 1960, which among other things led to Congress passing the Wilderness Act, and Rachel Carson‘s Silent Spring. In 1970, Senator Gaylor Nelson (D-WI) called for an environmental teach-in which attracted over 20 million people to participate. The United Nations celebrates Earth Day on the vernal equinox which falls in March.
Today the organization Earth Network does a lot of work to promote environmental awareness and to promote legislation that will help curb our ecological footprint. Try this interesting test to see how big your ecological footprint is. Even though my footprint was about a third of what is to be expected where I live, it would still take 2.1 planet to fulfill the demand if everyone on the planet lived at my level. Scary to think that it would then take over 6 planets to meet the demand at our regular level of consumption!
Image by NASA.