Earth Day is one of two observances, both held annually during spring in the northern hemisphere, and autumn in the southern hemisphere. These are intended to inspire awareness of and appreciation for the Earth's environment. The United Nations celebrates an Earth Day each year on the March equinox, a tradition which was founded by peace activist John McConnell in 1969.
A second Earth Day, which was founded by U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in in 1970, is celebrated in many countries each year on April 22.
2012 Environmentalism can also be defined as a social movement which seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism, and education in order to protect natural resources and ecosystems. In recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the environmental movement is centered on ecology, health, and human rights.
An 2012 awareness environmentalist is a person who may advocate the sustainable management of resources and stewardship of the natural environment through changes in public policy or individual behavior.
EARTH HOUR
Earth Hour is a global event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, also known as World Wildlife Fund) and is held on the last Saturday of March annually, asking households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights and other electrical appliances for one hour to raise awareness towards the need to take action on climate change. Earth hour was conceived by WWF and the Sydney Morning Herald in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney's lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008.
Many cities extend the Earth Day celebration to be an entire week, usually starting on April 16, and ending on Earth Day, April 22. Earth Day Sunday is a semi-religious holiday that many churches in the United States have begun to celebrate on the Sunday before Earth Day. The day is meant to inspire parishioners to "celebrate and protect God's creation."
People can do their part in making a difference by:
1. Encouraging your family to recycle on a regular basis is a good way to help the Earth!
2. Switching to energy-efficient lightbulbs in your house helps to reduce the effects of global warming.
3. Every glass bottle you recycle saves enough energy to run a TV for an hour and a half, while recycling an aluminum can saves enough energy to run your TV for three hours!
4. Turn out the lights when you leave a room - unless someone's still in there!
5. Use re-useable containers for you school lunches and snacks.
A continuous stream of bands, speakers and various workshops occurs throughout the weekend on each of WEF's three stages and other specialty areas. The majority of the festival is solar powered.
The Annual Whole Earth Festival
Sustainalovability
Come join us for a celebration of Spring! Once again, we will be bringing to the UC Davis Quad a diverse and powerful group of thousands to Educate, Inspire, Entertain and Share the Love of the WHOLE EARTH. We will be featuring two live music stages, a DJ pit of electronica, the soular Dance stage, and other musical and performance spaces. Participate in workshops, craft opportunities, dance, and much more. We hope to offer many alternative education opportunities to help spread information about making our lives more sustainable.
WEF is organized primarily by UC Davis students, in association with the Associated Students of UC Davis (ASUCD), Experimental College, and the university.
The mission of the Whole Earth Festival is to envision and create a community driven festival of education, music, and art. We will ensure that as little ‘waste’ as possible is generated during this festival. We will cultivate amazing organic produce grown in the WEF garden into tasty, nutritional meals to feed volunteers, staff, & performers, while making it both yummy and educational. Frugality and ecological sustainability come hand in hand, as we educate and engage the festival goers, we are careful with the resources we create and consume. We will rely on each other more and rely on corporations and oil less, by carpooling and sharing our homes. Most importantly, we want to create a safe, educational, and inspiring environment not simply just for the three days we set up on the Quad. We want to develop a conscious community that will go out into the world after the festival and encourage the values that we hold dear. We are all equal participants in the conscious creation that is the Whole Earth Festival.
In September 1969 at a conference in Seattle, Washington, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin announced that in spring 1970 there would be a nationwide grassroots demonstration on the environment. This occurred during a time of great concern about overpopulation and when there was a strong movement towards "Zero Population Growth."
Nelson viewed the stabilization of the nation's population as an important aspect of environmentalism and later said:
"The bigger the population gets, the more serious the problems become ... We have to address the population issue. The United Nations, with the U.S. supporting it, took the position in Cairo in 1994 that every country was responsible for stabilizing its own population. It can be done. But in this country, it's phony to say 'I'm for the environment but not for limiting immigration.'"
Senator Nelson first proposed the nationwide environmental protest to thrust the environment onto the national agenda.” "It was a gamble," he recalls, "but it worked."
Five months before the first April 22 Earth Day, on Sunday, November 30, 1969, The New York Times carried a lengthy article by Gladwin Hill reporting on the rising hysteria of "global cooling":
"Rising concern about the environmental crisis is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam...a national day of observance of environmental problems...is being planned for next spring...when a nationwide environmental 'teach-in'...coordinated from the office of Senator Gaylord Nelson is planned...." Senator Nelson also hired Denis Hayes as the coordinator.
April 22, 1970, Earth Day marks the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Approximately 20 million Americans participated, with a goal of a healthy, sustainable environment.
Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized 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.
Mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues onto the world stage, Earth Day on April 22 in 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy. The April 22 Earth Day in 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the Internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 rolled around, 5,000 environmental groups around the world were on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries. Events varied: A talking drum chain traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, for example, while hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., USA.
Earth Day 2000 sent the message loud and clear that citizens the world 'round wanted quick and decisive action on clean energy. Earth Day 2007 was one of the largest Earth Days to date, with an estimated billion people participating in the activities in thousands of places like Kiev, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; Tuvalu; Manila, Philippines; Togo; Madrid, Spain; London; and New York.
Founded by the organizers of the first April 22 Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide. Earth Day Network is a driving force steering environmental awareness around the world. Through Earth Day Network, activists connect change in local, national, and global policies. Earth Day Network’s international network reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, while the domestic program engages 5,000 groups and over 25,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. Earth Day is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day Network campaigns every year.
The equinoctial Earth Day is celebrated on the March equinox (around 20 March) to mark the precise moment of astronomical mid-spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and of astronomical mid-autumn in the Southern Hemisphere. An equinox in astronomy is that moment in time (not a whole day) when the center of the Sun can be observed to be directly "above" the Earth's equator, occurring around March 20 and September 23 each year. In most cultures the equinoxes and solstices are considered to start or separate the seasons.
John McConnell first introduced the idea of a global holiday called "Earth Day" at a UNESCO Conference on the Environment in 1969. The first Earth Day proclamation was issued by San Francisco Mayor Joseph Alioto on March 21, 1970. Celebrations were held in various cities including San Francisco, in Davis, California with a multi-day street party, and elsewhere. UN Secretary-General U Thant supported McConnell's global initiative to celebrate this annual event, and on February 26, 1971, he signed a proclamation to that effect, saying:
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 on the March equinox in 1972, and the United Nations Earth Day ceremony has continued each year since on the day of the March equinox (the United Nations also works with organizers of the April 22nd global event). Margaret Mead added her support for the equinox Earth Day, and in 1978 declared:
"EARTH DAY is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space.
EARTH DAY draws on astronomical phenomena in a new way – which is also the most ancient way – using the vernal Equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length in all parts of the Earth. To this point in the annual calendar, EARTH DAY attaches no local or divisive set of symbols, no statement of the truth or superiority of one way of life over another. But the selection of the March Equinox makes planetary observance of a shared event possible, and a flag which shows the Earth as seen from space appropriate."
At the moment of the equinox, it is traditional to observe Earth Day by ringing the Japanese Peace Bell, a bell donated by Japan to the United Nations.[4] Over the years celebrations have occurred in various cities worldwide at the same time as the celebration at the UN. On March 20, 2008, in addition to the ceremony at the United Nations, ceremonies were held in New Zealand, and bells were sounded in California, Vienna, Paris, Lithuania, Tokyo and many other locations. The equinox Earth Day at the UN is organized by the Earth Society Foundation
The April 22 Earth Day
Growing eco-activism before Earth Day 1970
The 1960s had been a very dynamic period for ecology in the US, in both theory and practice. It was in the mid-1960s that Congress passed the sweeping Wilderness Act, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas asked, "Who speaks for the trees?" Pre-1960 grassroots activism against DDT in Nassau County, New York, had inspired Rachel Carson to write her shocking bestseller Silent Spring (1962).
Earth Day 1970
Responding to widespread environmental degradation, Gaylord Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin, called for an environmental teach-in, or Earth Day, to be held on April 22, 1970. Over 20 million people participated that year, and Earth Day is now observed each year on April 22 by more than 500 million people and national governments in 175 countries.
Senator Nelson, an environmental activist, took a leading role in organizing the celebration, hoping to demonstrate popular political support for an environmental agenda. He modeled it on the highly effective Vietnam War protests of the time. The concept of Earth Day was first proposed in a memo to JFK written by Fred Dutton.
According to Santa Barbara, California Community Environmental Council:
The story goes that Earth Day was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson after a trip he took to Santa Barbara right after that horrific oil spill off our coast in 1969. He was so outraged by what he saw that he went back to Washington and passed a bill designating April 22 as a national day to celebrate the earth.
Senator Nelson selected Denis Hayes, a Harvard University graduate student, as the national coordinator of activities. Hayes said he wanted Earth Day to "bypass the traditional political process." Garrett DuBell compiled and edited The Environmental Handbook the first guide to the Environmental Teach-In. Its symbol was a green Greek letter theta, "the dead theta".
The nationwide event included opposition to the Vietnam War on the agenda, but this was thought to detract for the environmental message. Pete Seeger was a keynote speaker and performer at the event held in Washington DC. Paul Newman and Ali McGraw attended the event held in New York City.
The most notable organization to protest the event was that Daughters of the American Revolution.
The Results of Earth Day 1970.
Earth Day proved popular in the United States and around the world. The first Earth Day had participants and celebrants in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the United States. More importantly, it "brought 20 million Americans out into the spring sunshine for peaceful demonstrations in favor of environmental reform."
Senator Nelson stated when that Earth Day "worked" because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. Twenty-million demonstrators and thousands of schools and local communities participated. He directly credited the first Earth Day with persuading U.S. politicians that environmental legislation had a substantial, lasting constituency. Many important laws were passed by the Congress in the wake of the 1970 Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act, wild lands and the ocean, and the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
It is now observed in 175 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, according to whom Earth Day is now "the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a half billion people every year." Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes.
List of environmental dates
* World Wetlands Day - February 2
* National Biodiesel Day - March 18
* UN World Day for Water - March 22
* Earth Day - April 22
* Arbor Day - Last Friday in April (each state also has its own observation based on best tree planting time)
* International Migratory Bird Day - May 3
* International Day for Biological Diversity (World Biodiversity Day) - May 22
* Bike-to-Work Day - Third Friday in May
* UN World Environment Day - June 5
* UN World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought - June 17
* UN World Population Day - July 11
* International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer - September 16
* Car Free Day - September 22
* Zero Emissions Day - September 20
* Ecological Debt Day (Earth Overshoot Day) - September 23 in 2008, but receding
* UN World Habitat Day - first Monday in October
* International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction - second Wednesday in October
* International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict - November 6
* International Mountain Day - December 11
* Ozone Action Day - at certain times during the summer months
This is a list of environmental issues that are due to human activities. These articles relate to the anthropogenic effects on the natural environment.
If We Can Save the Earth by 2012 then We Save Ourselves!
If we want to make the world change by december 2012 for the better here are the immediates issues we need to face today:
* Climate change — Global warming • Global dimming • Fossil fuels • Sea level rise • Greenhouse gas • Global Cooling
* Conservation — Species extinction • Pollinator decline • Coral bleaching • Holocene extinction event • Invasive species • Poaching • Endangered species
* Dams — Environmental impacts of dams
* Energy — Energy conservation • Renewable energy • Efficient energy use • Renewable energy commercialization
From the sun-scorched sands of the Kalahari to the snake-infested jungles of the Amazon, Les Stroud has made a life of surviving in the harshest—and most remote—regions on Earth.
Now, the creator, producer, and host of the hit television program Survivorman transfers his decades of knowledge and experience to the pages of Survive!, a practical guide that gives everyday readers a no-nonsense look at the real world of survival.
Stroud offers readers the essential skills and tactics necessary to endure in any corner of the globe, along with a wealth of insider information born of his own experiences in the outdoors and unavailable in any other book. Readers will learn:
How to make a survival shelter and why a lean-to is largely a waste of time.
Why survival kits are important, and why you should make your own.
Where to find water and why drinking contaminated water is sometimes warranted.
How to locate and trap small animals and why the notion of tracking and hunting large game is largely a pipe dream.
Whether seasoned in the outdoor arts or new to adventuring, all readers will learn something from Survive!. Stroud's many colorful anecdotes and cut-to-the-chase philosophy not only make for an entertaining read, but also enhance anyone's ability to focus on the main goal when everything else has gone wrong—survival.
Celebrate the 260 day Mayan calendar and the 360 day calendar! Olmec, Aztec and the Maya human beings used this calendar before they were conquered. This is a spiritual calendar showing the sequence of energies which are "day." See for yourself.
By entering this 2012 web site, in exchange for use of this website, you the user hereby agree to the following:
The content of this website is for mature viewers only and may not be suitable for minors. If you are a minor or it is illegal for you to view nudity or mature images and language, do not proceed.
This site is presented to you AS IS, with no warranty, express or implied. By clicking "I Agree" and then viewing our site, you agree not to hold the webmaster and staff of this site (2012thetruth.com) liable for any damages from your use of these pages.
As a condition of using this site, you must fully read and understand, and comply with the rules of this site, which may be located by following the "Rules" link on the home page (2012thetruth.com).
[PLEASE NOTE: The articles released, posted, published OR issued by 2012thetruth.com. Any errors, typos, etc. are attributed to the original author. The Articles releases or reproduced solely for the dissemination of the enclosed information.] We are not responsible for your beliefs or ideas about 2012 or 12-21-2012, December 21, 2012, Doomsday, Armageddon, apocalypse.
NOTICE: 2012 News stories appear in new browser windows. Actual 2012 Paranormal and 2-12 News Stories are not archived on this web site; links may expire without notice. Increasingly more sites require registration, changes occur daily and from site to site, and smart browsers that remember logins make it impossible to point out which sites require it and which don't. Nor can we copy full real 2012 Paranormal Abnormal or Breaking News stories to our site without infringing copyright laws. If a link is dead we apologize for the inconvenience. So please don't let it haunt you for too long! 2012thetruth.com is not responsible for the content of external internet sites!
