Earth Day has been celebrated every year on April 22nd since 1970 . The idea of having a day designated day to honor Earth and the idea of peace was first proposed to occur on April 21st by peace activist, John McConnell at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco in 1969. However, American Senator Gaylord Nelson, founded a separate Earth Day, April 22, 1970 as an "environmental teach-in." This is the one we now celebrate. Until 1990, Earth Day was celebrated only in the United States. Denis Hayes, the original coordinator in 1970, took it international to 141 countries.
This April 22nd is an historic moment, as the Paris Agreement will be signed by the United States, China and some 120 others countries; Canada included. If you remember, 195 nations unanimously agreed to a climate protection treaty at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.
Just to remind you that one of the goals of the UN on climate change is highlighted on the video I used for my last blog in March. The words of the song, "We Love the SDG's" can be found here. SDG stands for Sustainable Development Goals that the UN has listed as those that the world will work on from 2015 to 2030.
For this blog, I am using the YouTube video called Tree Top Tales in which Deb Doncaster, President of Earth Day Canada tells us about the goals for this year.
Everyone involved with Earth Day wants to get the message out to everyone to plant a tree on that day. In so doing, we will be replacing the 18 million acres of trees lost each year.
Earth Day Network in particular has pledged to get 7.8 billion trees planted by 2020, the 50th birthday of Earth Day. That means one tree for every person on earth. Isn't that amazing?
In my research on this topic, I became aware that we need to look at the language we are using when we talk about nature, water in particular. Brook Dolman, founder of the Occidental Arts and Ecology Centre points out that our language can be negative, indicating a disrespect and abuse of the natural benefits of our planet. Think of the words we use: water is a resource, an asset or a commodity to be used and abused at will. He asks the questions:" Is the planet a community or a commodity? Is water a community or a commodity?"
Wow! That made me stop and think. How about you?
Let's bring this home to you and me. What are we planning to do on that day? How are we planning to dialogue and respectfully use the wonderful gifts of our planet?
Food for thought and dialogue, don't you think?
Happy Earth Day to you!
Posts
