Earth Day History
In the 1940’s Norman Corwin had a wonderful program on
NBC, called "Could Be." A great future for people and
planet would result if one or more of the media and money moguls
who seek to decide the future would make the following
happen:
(Front Page headline in New York Times - or Washington Post)
NEW YORK TIMES
BACKS EARTH DAY AND ITS EARTH TRUSTEE AGENDA
Recognizing that a radical change in media is necessary if we are
to prevent the demise of civilization, the New York Times has
decided to provide headlines and features for actions and events
that promise lasting benefit to people and planet.
To begin, we want to call attention to the Equinox Earth Day
– the occasion that can motivate needed action. This
simultaneous global event on Saturday, March 20, ushers in the
beginning of Spring in New York – home of the United
Nations where the centerpiece of Earth Day at the United Nations
will be the ringing of the Peace Bell at nature’s global
moment of equipoise – the beginning of Spring.
Consider the words of Margaret Mead – broadcast by New York
Times radio, WQXR, in 1978. Here is what Earth Day should
be – and could be.
EARTH DAY by Margaret Mead
EPA Journal March 1978
Margaret Mead, an internationally recognized anthropologist,
educator, and activist in world affairs, is the 1978 Earth Day
chairperson.
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; using the
vernal equinox, the time when the Sun crosses the equator making
night an 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. The choice has been made of
one of two equinoxes, the springtime of one hemisphere, the
autumn of the other, making the rhythmic relationship between the
two capable of being shared by all the peoples of the Earth,
translated into any language, marked on any calendar, destroying
no historical calendar, yet transcending them all. Where
men have fought over calendrical differences in the past and
invested particular days like May Day or Christmas with desperate
partisanship, invoking their God with enthusiasms which excluded
others, the prayers for EARTH DAY are silence – where there
is no confusion of tongues – and the peal of the peace bell
ringing around the Earth, as now satellites transform distance
into communication.
EARTH DAY celebrates the interdependence within the natural world
of all living things, humanity’s utter dependence upon Earth
– man’s only home – and in turn the vulnerability
of this Earth of ours to the ravages of irresponsible
technological exploitation. It celebrates our long past in
which we have learned so much of the ways of the universe, and
our long
future, if only we apply what we know responsibly and
wisely. It celebrates the importance of the air and the
oceans to life and to peace. On the blue and white wastes
of the picture of Earth from space, there are no boundary lines
except those made by water and mountains. Yet in this
picture of the Earth, the harsh impersonal structures of world
politik disappear; there are no zones of influences, political
satellites, international blocs, only people who live in lands,
on land, that they cherish.
EARTH DAY is a great idea, well founded in our present scientific
knowledge, tied specifically to our solar universe. But the
protection of the Earth is also a matter of day-to-day decisions,
of how a field is to be fertilized, a dam built, a crop planted,
how some technical process is to be used to enrich or deplete the
soil. It is a matter of whether the conveniences of the
moment are to override provision for our children’s
future. All this involves decisions, some taken by
individuals, some by national governments, some by multinational
corporations, and some by the United Nations. Planetary
housekeeping is not – as men’s work has been said to be
– just from sun to sun, but, as has been said, like
women’s work that is never done. Earth Day lends
itself to ceremony, to purple passages of glowing rhetoric, to a
catch in the throat and a tear in the eye, easily evoked, but
also too easily wiped away.
EARTH DAY uses one of humanity’s great discoveries, the
discovery of anniversaries by which, throughout time, human
beings have kept their sorrows and their joys, their victories,
their revelations and their obligations alive, for re-celebration
and re-dedication another year, another decade, another century
another aeon. But the noblest anniversary, devoted to the
vastest enterprise now in our power, the presrvation of this
planet could easily become an empty observance if our hearts are
not in it. EARTH DAY
reminds the people of the world of the continuing care which is
vital to Earth’s safety.
Margaret Mead
EPA Journal March 1978