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Earth Day Unit Outline Natural Resources: Physical Science Spring 2020 Sanders Earth Day Unit Outline The suggested schedule for this unit: Week of April 20-24: It’s Earth Day on April 22nd! We are going to spend the week learning about Earth Day and it’s importance. We only get one planet, might as well take care of it. Mandatory Items: Week 1 To be Suggested date for com​ pletion and turn in is Monday, April 27th turned in to ​ Sanders Earth Day Poster Create an Earth Day poster and hang it in your window or as a backdrop of your social media page Teach and/or Educate! Teach someone about a way to celebrate Earth Day or how to protect our planet/resources Summarize the Importance Read the selected articles (or gain more of your X of Earth Day own) to summarize what Earth Day is and why it is significant in a paragraph or more. Choose your own adventure-Pick 2 of the following items x History of Earth Day-Read http://www.nelsonearthday.net/earth-day/index.ph and explore the following p websites And https://www.earthday.org/ Make a Make a video/advertisement for Earth Day (paper video/advertisement or digital) Environmental Simulation https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/cornu Game copia/educational-games/support-materials/ Create art Using recycled materials you have at home, create something useful-clothing, artwork, tool, bird feeder, etc. Garden Gear Up Plan a garden bed! Carbon Calculator Calculate your Carbon Footprint: https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to- help/carbon-footprint-calculator/ Extra Practice-not required or graded ​ Earth Day 1970-2020 video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBrnnByieL4 4/19/2020 https://www.liveabout.com/the-history-of-earth-day-1203691?print Home The History of Earth Day Highlighting our shared responsibility for the environment By Larry West Updated April 04, 2019 Earth Day is the name given to two different annual observances that are intended to raise awareness about a wide range of environmental issues and problems and to inspire people to take personal action to address them. Except for that general goal, the two events are unrelated, even though both were founded about a month apart in 1970 and both have gained wider acceptance and popularity ever since. The First Earth Day In the United States, Earth Day is celebrated by most people on April 22, but there is another celebration that predates that one by approximately a month and is celebrated internationally. The first Earth Day celebration took place on March 21, 1970, the vernal equinox that year. It was the brainchild of John McConnell, a newspaper publisher and influential community activist who proposed the idea of a global holiday called Earth Day at a UNESCO Conference on the Environment in 1969. McConnell suggested an annual observance to remind people of their shared responsibility as environmental stewards. He chose the vernal equinox—the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere and the first day of autumn in the southern hemisphere—because it is a day of renewal. At the vernal equinox (always March 20 or March 21), night and day are the same lengths everywhere on Earth. McConnell believed that Earth Day should be a time of equilibrium when people could put aside their differences and recognize their common need to preserve Earth’s resources. On February 26, 1971, U.N. Secretary-General U Thant signed a proclamation saying that the United Nations would celebrate Earth Day annually on the vernal equinox, thereby officially https://www.liveabout.com/the-history-of-earth-day-1203691?print 1/3 4/19/2020 https://www.liveabout.com/the-history-of-earth-day-1203691?print establishing the March date as the international Earth Day. In his Earth Day statement on March 21, 1971, Thant said, “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.” The United Nations continues to celebrate Earth Day each year by ringing the Peace Bell at U.N. headquarters in New York at the precise moment of the vernal equinox. The History of Earth Day in the United States On April 22, 1970, the Environmental Teach-In held a nationwide day of environmental education and activism that it called Earth Day. The event was inspired and organized by environmental activist and Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis. Nelson wanted to show other U.S. politicians that there was widespread public support for a political agenda centered on environmental issues. Nelson began organizing the event from his Senate office, assigning two staff members to work on it, but soon more space and more people were needed. John Gardner, the founder of Common Cause, donated office space. Nelson selected Harvard University student Denis Hayes to coordinate Earth Day activities and gave him a staff of volunteer college students to help. The event was wildly successful, sparking Earth Day celebrations at thousands of colleges, universities, schools, and communities all across the United States. An October 1993 article in American Heritage Magazine proclaimed, “…April 22, 1970, Earth Day was…one of the most remarkable happenings in the history of democracy…20 million people demonstrated their support…American politics and public policy would never be the same again.” Following the Earth Day celebration inspired by Nelson, which demonstrated widespread grassroots support for the environmental legislation, Congress passed many important environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, as well as laws to protect wilderness areas. The Environmental Protection Agency was created within three years after Earth Day 1970. In 1995, Nelson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton for his role in founding Earth Day, raising awareness of environmental issues, and promoting environmental action. The Importance of Earth Day Now No matter when you celebrate Earth Day, its message about the personal responsibility we all share to “think globally and act locally” as environmental stewards of planet Earth has never been more timely or important. Edited by Frederic Beaudry https://www.liveabout.com/the-history-of-earth-day-1203691?print 2/3 4/19/2020 Earth Day 2020 - HISTORY UPDATED:: FEB 28,, 2020 ·· ORIIGIINAL:: OCT 27,, 2009 Earth Day 2020 H IISSTTO R Y ..C O M EED IITTO R SS Corbis Earth Day was founded in 1970 as a day of education about environmental issues, and Earth Day 20 occurs on Wednesday, April 22—the holiday's 50th anniversary. The holiday is now a global celebration that’s sometimes extended CONTENTS into Earth Week, a full seven days of events focused on green living. The brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson and inspired by the protests of the 1960s, Earth Day began as a “national teach-in on the environment” and was 1. Earth Day History held on April 22 to maximize the number of students that could be reached on 2. Who Started Earth Day? university campuses. By raising public awareness of pollution, Nelson hoped to bring environmental causes into the national spotlight. 3. The First Earth Day: April 22, 1970 Earth Day History 4. What Do You Do For Earth Day? By the early 1960s, Americans were becoming aware of the effects of pollution on the environment. Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestseller Silent Spring raised the specter of the dangerous effects of pesticides on the American countryside. Later in the decade, a 1969 fire on Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River shed light on the problem of chemical waste disposal. Until that time, protecting the planet’s natural resources was not part of the national political agenda, and the number of activists devoted to large-scale issues such as industrial pollution was minimal. Factories pumped pollutants into the air, lakes and rivers with few legal consequences. Big, gas-guzzling cars were considered a sign of prosperity. Only a small portion of the American population was familiar with–let alone practiced–recycling. Did you know? A highlight of the United Nations' Earth Day celebration in New York City is the ringing of the Peace Bell, a gift from Japan, at the exact moment of the vernal equinox. Who Started Earth Day? Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962, Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Democrat from Wisconsin, was determined to convince the federal government that the planet was at risk. In 1969, Nelson, considered one of the leaders of the modern environmental movement, developed the idea for Earth Day after being inspired by the anti-Vietnam War “teach-ins” that were taking place on college campuses around the United States. According to Nelson, he envisioned a large-scale, grassroots environmental demonstration “to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda.” Nelson announced the Earth Day concept at a conference in Seattle in the fall of 1969 and invited the entire nation to get involved. He later recalled: https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/earth-day 1/3 4/19/2020 Earth Day 2020 - HISTORY “The wire services carried the story from coast to coast. The response was electric. It took off like gangbusters. Telegrams, letters and telephone inquiries poured in from all across the country. The American people finally had a forum to express its concern about what was happening to the land, rivers, lakes and air—and they did so with spectacular exuberance.” Denis Hayes, a young activist who had served as student president at Stanford University, was selected as Earth Day’s national coordinator, and he worked with an army of student volunteers and several staff members from Nelson’s Senate office to organize the project.
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