Earth Day at 50
What can the current crisis teach us about helping our planet on an unusual Earth Day?
It’s almost fitting that for the 50th anniversary of Earth Day, there are clear skies and one can see for miles into the distance. From Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi, Africa’s gateway in and out of East and Central Africa, you can actually see both Mount Kenya and even the tallest mountain on the African continent Mount Kilimanjaro. You can spy the Himalayas from a 100 miles away in New Delhi, the world’s most polluted capital city for the second straight year in 2019. Earth orbiting satellites everywhere observe significantly reduced emissions, seismologists are noticing less vibration in the earth’s core, and humpback whales in Canada’s Bay of Fundy may experience a drop in stress hormones as the noisy waters calm down. It would have been a great sign of our progress in fighting pollution — if it wasn’t caused by most of the world being in an enforced shutdown due to a global pandemic.
Fifty years ago, a young activist called Dennis Hayes had an idea. The student anti-war protests during the Vietnam years had shown that America’s young people could be a powerful force for change. What if that same energy could be harnessed for collective awareness of environmental issues? That brainwave was the foundation of the first Earth Day…
