Earth Day Birthday

        Earth day and my birthday day are one and the same.  On April 22 of each year I have always celebrated my birthday.  Around the 3^rd or 4^th grade I found out that there was another event on the 22^nd of April.  This event that I was told to celebrate was called Earth day.  Because I had never heard of this before I thought that the day was just created.  That was until I saw an episode of Jeopardy this semester, where one of the questions was about a day in 1969 that was created for the celebration and awareness of the Earth. 

        Earth day was founded on April 22, 1969 by a politician named Gaylord Nelson who was an environmentalist.  It was created to be a nationwide environmental protest so the environment would be put onto the national agenda.  On Earth day in 1970 20 million Americans demonstrated for a healthy, sustainable environment.  Environmentalists at colleges and environmental groups held rallies and protests on subjects like oil spills, polluting factories, power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife. 

        In 1990 Earth day focused more on recycling and involved more the 200 million people in 141 countries.  As Earth day gets older the number of people and countries involved continue to get bigger.  Earth day 2007 had a record number of people participating which was around 1 billion. 

        There is also another Earth day that is celebrated on the March equinox.  This is the date that is observed by the Untied Nations.  The March equinox was chosen because that is the time when the sun is directly above the equator and is considered to separate the seasons. 

        There are many events going on in Chico to celebrate Earth day.  Lassen and Shasta halls will be competing to see who can use the least amount of energy.  There will be a veggie feed in the free speech area on campus to raise awareness on healthy-environmental-friendly food. 

        At 2:00 in the multicultural center a recycled art show will be held to show off art work and show off recycled products.  60 Earth hour will be at 8:00 PM tonight which is aimed at reducing carbon emissions and making an effort to turn your lights off for one hour.  As awareness about the environment continues, I believe that so will Earth day.  Some people believe that Earth day is useless and just a day for fake environmentalists to feel better about themselves, but hopefully real change will begin to take form.  We will just have to wait and see what future Earth days will bring.