by John Rettig, Conservation Committee Co-chair
Earth Day is an annual event held on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection. It was first held on April 22, 1970, and now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally through earthday.org.
Its conception was in 1969 at a UNESCO conference, after activist John McConnell proposed setting aside a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed at the United Nations, and a month later, Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. It grew well beyond this original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States, and got the name coined, “Earth Day”. Key non-environmentally focused partners played major roles in this growth; notably the United Auto Workers union, which was unusual for the day.
Early Earth Day commemorations were focused on the United States, but in 1990, Denis Hayes, the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international and organized events in 141 nations.
The theme for Earth Day 2025 is Our Power, Our Planet, inviting everyone around the globe to unite behind renewable energy, and to triple the global generation of clean electricity by 2030.
Earth Day has been more than a commemorative event that looks back at the start of it all back in 1970; it was also intended from the beginning to be a participatory event. The participant count recently surpassed one billion worldwide in 183 countries, and there are many fine groups and organizations that are putting together local volunteer events near you, mostly on the April 19-20 weekend. These focus on repairing the damage done to our planet, and if you can find one and help them out, it would be great! Here is one that I partnered with for years to organize a local event to clean up around Portland’s Forest Park; they also list many similar events all around Oregon: solveoregon.org
Elsewhere, you can consult this map of events worldwide: https://www.earthday.org/campaign/cleanup/#map