Earth Day

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John McConnell's unofficial earth flag: The Blue Marble on a blue background

The Earth Day ( English Earth Day ) is celebrated every year on April 22 with a specific focus and motto in over 175 countries and aims to strengthen the appreciation of the natural environment, but also stimulate the consumer behavior to reconsider.

Emergence

The name and concept were first proposed by John McConnell in 1969 at a UNESCO conference in San Francisco . It was to be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere . This day was later manifested as a world day of action in a proclamation by UN Secretary General U Thant .

Around the same time , in order to raise awareness of the problems of environmental pollution , the then US Senator from Wisconsin Gaylord Nelson initiated a national day of environmental action called Environmental Teach-in or Earth Day , which takes place annually on April 22nd to help the people To encourage reconsideration of their consumption. The day has been celebrated in the United States since 1970 , where it was very popular from the start and where events take place every year at thousands of universities and colleges . On the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million people took part in actions.

Regardless of this, Earth Day was and will continue to be celebrated in numerous cities on the (variable) date proposed by John McConnell at the beginning of spring, including San Francisco and other cities in California . Part of this ceremony is the ringing of the - originally Japanese - World Peace Bell at the United Nations in New York, and since 1997 also in Vienna. The NGO Earth Society Foundation is the organizer.

However, April 22nd has established itself much more widely as Earth Day and is curated worldwide by the Earth Day Network.

International significance

In 2016, the Paris Agreement was signed as a further intermediate step in New York

This secular holiday has been celebrated internationally on April 22nd since 1990. 200 million people in 141 countries were reached. This global campaign also served in preparation for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 . In 2000, Earth Day was organized by Kelly Evans. It reached around 5,000 environmental organizations in 183 countries and an estimated several hundred million people. Leonardo DiCaprio was the official guest for the central opening event, which counted 400,000 participants. The campaign found support in particular from the former US Vice President Al Gore .

In 2009, at the suggestion of the Bolivian government, April 22nd was declared International Mother Earth Day by the United Nations General Assembly . As the day of creation , earth day is also a church day of remembrance for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America .

World conference

After the failed UN climate conference in Copenhagen in 2009, the Bolivian President Evo Morales invited to International Mother Earth Day 2010 and to an alternative world conference of peoples on climate change and the rights of mother earth . State representatives should work with experts and non-governmental organizations to find other ways to deal with human-made climate change . The conference with more than 30,000 participants from more than 140 countries took place from April 20-22, 2010 in Cochabamba (Bolivia). Government officials from 47 countries also took part in the event.

In his opening address, President Morales named the capitalist system as the main cause of the imbalance on earth, as the planet and its people would suffer from the limitless pressure to grow . In 17 working groups that met in overcrowded lecture halls, a ten-page “Agreement of the Nations” was drawn up. The agricultural sector, which produces food for the market but not for the nutrition of all people, was named as one of the main causes of climate change. The industrialized countries were asked to halve their CO 2 emissions by 2020 and to pay six percent of their annual budget into a global climate fund. Companies and governments should be able to be sued before a World Climate Court to be set up. A global referendum on environmental protection should be organized jointly by governments, environmental organizations and trade unions. The plans should be presented at the following UN climate conference in Cancun 2010. "Earth Day" has been called "International Mother Earth Day" since then .

subjects

2017

In 2017, the Earth Day in Germany had the motto Green IT for the climate - our communication is getting greener ! . In addition, on this day in the US capital Washington, DC, as a protest against the denial of climate change by parts of the US government under the new US President Donald Trump and the suppression or deletion of relevant information, e.g. B. on the website of the White House with the dissemination of " alternative facts " and " fake news " ("false reports" or lies) as well as the establishment of a post-factual era worldwide in over 600 cities a March for Science with a total of hundreds of thousands of participants, also in Germany at 22 locations, here with a total of almost 70,000 participants.

2021

In 2021, the international motto of Earth Day is “Restore our earth!”, In Germany “Every bite counts”. The NASA provides for Earth Day 2021 a communication with crew members of the ISS on. Registrations are possible for everyone.

In the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference 2021, US President Joe Biden invited forty world leaders, including the heads of government of the 17 most important industrialized and emerging countries, to a two-day virtual summit conference on climate change that began on Earth Day and can be followed live on the Internet.

Trivia

  • Singer and guitarist Devin Townsend released a song called Earth Day .
  • The American singer-songwriter John Denver released a song entitled Earth Day Every Day (Celebrate) on the album Earth Songs in 1990 .
  • Michael Jackson released his Earth Song in relation to World Environment Day , which is celebrated on June 5th.
  • The Empire State Building in New York City was illuminated green on Earth Day.
  • Since 2001, a corresponding Google doodle has been displayed on the Google homepage worldwide for Earth Day to draw attention to this day. In 2016, Google even designed 5 doodles to generate even more attention for the day.
  • In 2016, Apple donated the proceeds from 27 selected apps, including Angry Birds 2 and Candy Crush Saga , to the WWF .
  • Germany's biggest Earth Day festival takes place every year on the penultimate Sunday in April in Kassel . In 2017, it was held for the first time in a purely vegan and vegetarian manner to highlight the high ecological footprint of meat consumption.

Web links

Commons : Earth Day  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Peoples Agreement of the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gaylord Nelson: How the First Earth Day Came About. (No longer available online.) In: EnviroLink Network. Archived from the original on April 21, 2010 ; accessed on April 24, 2010 .
  2. ↑ Earth Society Foundation - Earth Day 2009 photos. Retrieved March 14, 2021 .
  3. ^ Earth Society Foundation - History. Retrieved March 14, 2021 .
  4. ↑ Earth Day: The Official Site | EARTHDAY.ORG. Accessed March 14, 2021 .
  5. ↑ Report dated April 23, 2000 in the New York Times
  6. ↑ GENERAL ASSEMBLY PROCLAIMS 22 APRIL 'INTERNATIONAL MOTHER EARTH DAY'. In: United Nations. April 22, 2009, accessed March 28, 2010 . PRESS CONFERENCE BY PRESIDENT OF BOLIVIA ON INTERNATIONAL MOTHER EARTH DAY. In: Media Newswire. April 23, 2009, accessed March 28, 2010 .
  7. ↑ April 22nd. In: The Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints. Retrieved April 20, 2012 .
  8. ↑ a b Gerhard Dilger: Alternative conference in Bolivia should bring new momentum to climate negotiations. In: domradio.de. Archived from the original on April 26, 2010 ; Retrieved April 23, 2010 .
  9. ↑ Roswitha Yildiz: Planet Earth or Death. In: amerika21. April 22, 2010. Retrieved April 22, 2010 .
  10. ↑ Earth Day on April 22nd: Sustainable mobility has a future - speed for a liveable traffic turnaround. Retrieved March 14, 2021 .
  11. ↑ March for Science.org (February 24, 2017)
  12. ↑ March for Science - also in your city! In: March for Science Germany. Retrieved April 22, 2021 (German).
  13. ↑ Earth Day 2021 | Restore Our Earth ™ | EARTHDAY.ORG. Accessed March 22, 2021 .
  14. ↑ Earth Day on April 22nd: Sustainable mobility has a future - speed for a liveable traffic turnaround. Retrieved March 22, 2021 .
  15. ^ NASA Science. Retrieved April 22, 2021 .
  16. ↑ Winand von Petersdorff, Washington: At the start of the climate summit: Biden announces ambitious climate goals . In: FAZ.NET . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed April 22, 2021]).
  17. ↑ Joe Biden faces major test building US credibility at climate summit. April 21, 2021, accessed April 22, 2021 .
  18. ^ Leaders Summit on Climate. In: United States Department of State. Accessed April 22, 2021 .
  19. ↑ Earth Day -Doodles since 2001 on Google.com
  20. ↑ Apple Apps for Earth. (No longer available online.) In: wwf.de. April 15, 2016, archived from the original on April 27, 2016 ; Retrieved April 27, 2016 .
  21. ↑ Apple starts app campaign for "Earth Day". In: Focus Online. April 14, 2016, accessed April 27, 2016 .
  22. ↑ Apple: 27 apps for Earth Day - Smartphones. In: stern.de. April 14, 2016, accessed April 27, 2016 .
  23. ↑ Earth Day - Kassel