 |
|
|
| ECARDS: |
Animated ECards, Birthday Cards, Greeting Cards, & ECards |
|
| Card Fountain has been providing members with 1000's of flash animated ecards, flash ecards, printable cards, time saving member tools, gift cards, online greeting cards, & more ecards, since 2001. |
|
|
|
OVERVIEW OF EARTH DAY
Earth Day is a name used by two different observances held annually in the (northern) spring, both intended to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth's fragile environment. Earth Day is in the public domain and open to all persons to shape. Some grassroots Earth Day organizers seek to move the date of the observance to the Summer Solstice, to take advantage of the warm temperatures in the Northern hemisphere (where most people live) to create greater participation.
"May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life."
United Nations Secretary-General U Thant
March 21, 1971.
On March 20 and April 22, 2005, the 35th Earth Day was celebrated.
HISTORY OF EARTH DAY
The original equinoctial Earth Day is celebrated in most countries on the vernal equinox to mark the precise moment that spring begins in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. At this global moment, night and day are equal length anywhere on Earth. At the South Pole, the sun sets, bringing an end to the six-month-long day, while at the North Pole, the sun rises, ending six months of continuous darkness. Anyone standing on the equator at noon will not cast a shadow. Earth Day is a day of equilibrium when differences are forgotten and nature's renewal is celebrated by all.
This annual event marks the beginning of Earth Day which has been traditionally observed with the ringing of bells. Earth Day was created to remind us of our shared responsibility to protect the planet. The United Nations celebrates Earth Day each year on the vernal equinox (around March 21). On February 26, 1971, UN Secretary-General U Thant signed a proclamation to that effect. At the moment of the equinox, the Peace Bell is rung at the UN headquarters in New York.
John McConnell first introduced the idea of a global holiday called Earth Day at a UNESCO Conference on the Environment in 1969, the same year that he designed the Earth flag. The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. U Thant supported John McConnell’s global initiative to celebrate this annual spring equinox event. In his statement on March 21, 1971, U Thant said: “May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life.” Secretary General Waldheim observed Earth Day with similar ceremonies in 1972. The United Nations Earth Day ceremony continued each year on the day of the March equinox (20th or 21st), with the ringing of the U.N. Peace Bell at the very moment of the equinox. In 1975 the U.S. Congress and President Ford proclaimed and urged observance of Earth Day on the March equinox.
The April 22 Earth Day
In January 1970, the Environmental Teach-In, decided to call their one-off event on 22 April Earth Day. The successes of that day led to it becoming a regular event. Gaylord Nelson, an environmental activist in the U.S. Senate, took a leading role in organizing the celebration, to demonstrate popular political support for an environmental agenda. Senator Nelson staffed the office with college students and selected Denis Hayes (a Harvard student and Stanford graduate) as coordinator of activities. It was the era of student political activism and outdoor protests that attracted news cameras.
According to Senator Nelson, Earth Day "worked" because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. Though he felt his committee had neither the time nor resources to organize the 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated, these things did happen. According to the Senator, "It organized itself."
The "holiday" proved extremely popular in the United States. The first Earth Day, in 1970, had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the U.S. Senator Nelson directly credited the first Earth Day with persuading U.S. politicians that environmental legislation had a substantial, lasting constituency. In 1971 Senator Gaylord Nelson announced an 'Earth Week' — for the third week of April — as a yearly event.
Many important laws were passed by the Congress in the wake of the 1970 Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act, laws to protect drinking water, wild lands and the ocean. The EPA was created within three years of the first Earth Day.
Earth Day leadership fractured over the years, with Hayes and Nelson and other widely-known Earth Day leaders favoring more programmatic and conventional public relations approaches to the observance(s), while grassroots groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes. Most people know about Earth Day from a 30-second blurb on their evening news of kids at school planting trees or doing a trash cleanup.
The political reality is that Earth Day is almost universally ignored or dismissed by serious policy people working on environment. Few seem to realize that this most widely-known date to honor nature could be used to galvanize action to benefit nature through changes in human behavior or actions to impact policy.
EARTH DAY TRIVIA
The date chosen for Earth Day is coincident with the historical date of Arbor Day a national tree planding holiday started in the late 1800's. Arbor Day is celebrated on the birthday of its founder, Julius Sterling Morton. Another reading of the April 22 date understood by Earth Day organizers notes that the 1970 event took place between college students' Spring Break and final exams, as it was the era of student protest and they were thus available.
The symbol for Earth Day is a green (Greek theta) on a white background.
Source: The English Wikipedia
|
|
|
| |
