Earth Day is a day that is intended to inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth's natural environment. Each year, Earth Day is on April 22nd , and it marks the anniversary of what many consider the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. The height of hippie and flower-child culture in the United States in 1970, brought the death of Jimi Hendrix, the last Beatles album, and Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge over Troubled Water”. Protest was the order of the day, but saving the planet was not the cause. War raged in Vietnam, and students nationwide increasingly opposed it.As a result, on the 22nd of April, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.
Apparently from 1970, to 2012, we haven’t progressed much from the days of the hippies and Vietnam. Our environment is riddled with toxins that pollute the air, tear down the ozone layer, and even pollute our water. It wasn’t too long ago when BP had a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, near where I live. That spill was catastrophic for my area and everyone that lives here. The animals that live in the water have suffered greatly, and so has the business along the coast. However, people gathered together to help clean the horrible mess up so we could get back to our everyday lives. But we are still struggling even today by the effects of this disaster. Quite a few business were forced to close due to the contamination of the beach and it’s seafood.
This weekend, we need to celebrate Earth Day more than ever. Go outside and plant a tree, clean up a local park or shoreline, or even discard harmful products you may have in your cabinet that contribute to our environments decay. If you aren’t already recycling bottles, cans or paper, start recycling these objects instead of throwing them out. If everyone participates in the cleaning of our environment, then we could turn our situation around. Scientists are hard at work trying to find environmentally friendly solutions to our lack of oil. Pretty soon, it appears, cars will run off of something less harmful to our world than gas, and hopefully everything else will soon follow suit. We need to begin to tap into solar and water powered objects and become less reliant on crude oils to run our societies.
Don’t sit back and hope someone else will save the environment for you, because it’s going to take all of us working together to save the world. So, let’s try to remember this day and keep building a clean, healthy, and diverse world for generations to come.