Earth Day celebrates its 40th anniversary

The planet wearing green again today, to celebrate Earth Day, which takes place 40 years and whose principal objective remains: to create a common awareness of the problems of pollution, conservation of biodiversity and other environmental concerns to protect the planet.

Today we remember precisely the spontaneous and popular character who had that first Earth Day, the April 22, 1970, inspired by Wisconsin Sen. Gaylord Nelson and mobilized some 20 million people in the U.S. alone. Nelson’s idea was to develop an environmental agency, and thanks to the pressure of two thousand universities, ten thousand primary and secondary schools and hundreds of American communities, it was able to launch the Environmental Protection Agency.

The fundamental argument to move is that the Earth is the home in which we all live. Therefore, it is a party that belongs to the people and is not regulated by a single entity or agency. With Earth Day are invited to participate in activities that promote the health of our planet, global, regional and local levels.

Thanks to this initiative have emerged other activities designed to advance the care of the environment and create public awareness of the dangers of pollution and excessive developmentalism. This is the case of ‘Earth Hour‘, which won more than one billion people around the world turned off the light for one hour.

Public and private entities, NGOs, universities and colleges, and organizations around the world use this celebration to emphasize that development must respect the environment. Earth Day aims to raise awareness of Earth’s natural resources and their management, environmental education and participation as environmentally conscious and responsible citizens. It also seeks to reflect on the importance of water, a vital fluid essential for human life and that despite elaborate on the planet a mere 2% is drinkable.