Environmental Holidays to Add to Your Calendar

Written by Micaela Sauve

We should celebrate our small blue planet and all it provides every day.

The Earth supplies the perfect conditions for human life to flourish. It’s the ideal distance from the Sun, has a protective atmosphere, diverse biology, and a perfect combination of chemical ingredients.

• Unfortunately, we’re disrupting the balance with our:
• Wasteful use of resources
• Technological advances
• Vast and rapidly increasing population
• Lack of concern for where we dump our wastes
• And carelessness with greenhouse gasses

These changes have triggered climate change, soil erosion, poor air quality, and contaminated water. As the planet grows hotter and the air gets more polluted, things like heat stroke, repeated dehydration, and breathing issues are becoming commonplace.

With planet, animal, and human health in decline, something needs to change. That's where environmental observance days or Earth events come into play.

Most Earth events have gone far beyond their original purpose. Most have become a catalyst for positive environmental impact; driving major legislative changes by harnessing the power of the people and collective action.

It brings a spotlight to the harm humans are capable of causing while showing the massive amounts of support across the globe for protecting the Earth and the environment.

There are two well-known Earth Events that happen annually. The first of which to happen each year is Earth Hour.

Earth Hour (Last Saturday of March)

Founded by the World Wildlife Foundation, Earth Hour aims to increase awareness and unite people together to shape a brighter future for the planet by encouraging people to turn off their lights for one hour in solidarity. 

The world’s first Earth Hour took place on Saturday, 31 March 2007 in Sydney, Australia. It saw more than 2.2 million people turn off their lights for one hour to show their climate-skeptic government that the people were concerned about climate change.

Today, Earth Hour is a globally recognized movement for the environment. Every year on the last Saturday of March, Earth Hour engages supporters in more than 190 countries and territories [1].

Earth Day (April 22nd)

Earth Day was first celebrated in the U.S. in 1970. At that time there was no government oversight of the environment. Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson came up with Earth Day as a way to draw attention to the cause as he had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States.

Later that same year, Congress authorized the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of other first of their kind environmental laws to handle environmental issues.

In 1990, another major campaign for the planet was organized. This time, Earth Day went global, connecting more than 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage. Earth Day 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 which shows just how important these days are to celebrate.

Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, celebrated by more than a billion people every year on April 22nd as a day of action to change human behavior and to create global, national, and local policy changes that protect the planet from things like pollution and deforestation [2].

This time of year serves as a great reminder to be the change you want to see.

What environmental observance days or Earth events do you know about or take part in?

Comment below and let us know!

Sources:

1. W. W. F. International, “Our mission: Earth hour,” Our Mission | Earth Hour. [Online]. Available: https://www.earthhour.org/our-mission.
2. “The history of earth day,” Earth Day, 02-Jul-2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.earthday.org/history/.