Earth Day, annual celebration honoring the achievements of the environmental movement and raising awareness of the importance of long-term ecological sustainability. Earth Day is celebrated in the United States on April 22; throughout the rest of the world it is celebrated on either April 22 or the day the vernal equinox occurs.
In the late 1960s there was an increased awareness of environmental concerns among Americans, and the prominent environmentalist and U.S. senator Gaylord Nelson sought to galvanize the conservation movement through the creation of a national celebration. To this end, Nelson—whose efforts in Congress included the passing of legislation that protected the Appalachian Trail and the banning of the use of the pesticide DDT—hired Denis Hayes, a graduate student at Harvard University. They sought to infuse the energy of student-led anti-war activism with the public’s emerging environmental consciousness in order to propel environmental protections into the national political agenda. Together they organized the first Earth Day, which took place on April 22, 1970, and was designed as an “environmental teach-in” that would educate participants in the importance of environmental conservation. The two largest gatherings occurred in Washington, D.C., where 10,000 people assembled at the Washington Monument, and in New York City, where a portion of Fifth Avenue was closed to traffic in observance of the event. Across the United States, 20 million people participated, many of them at schools, colleges, and universities. The event was instrumental in gaining support for the series of environmental legislation that passed through the U.S. Congress in the 1970s, including the Clean Air Act (1970) and the Endangered Species Act (1973).
(Explore Britannica’s Timeline of Environmental History)
In 1990 Hayes organized a global Earth Day, which was observed by some 200 million people in more than 140 countries. Since then, Earth Day has been international in scope. The day is often marked with tree plantings, beach clean-ups, demonstrations, educational lectures, citizen science initiatives, public art, and other environmental festivities. By the early 21st century, Earth Day’s many activities included raising awareness about a number of growing environmental concerns, especially the threat of global warming and the need for clean renewable energy sources. Indeed, in 2016 the international Paris Climate Agreement was emblematically opened for signatures on Earth Day. In 2020 many of the planned marches and other activities for the 50th anniversary celebration of Earth Day were canceled or forced online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
