Earth Day All Over Blogosphere

As I hop around the blogosphere, I was surprised that only few Filipinos blogged about Earth Day (If I’m not the only one), while the international blogosphere are buzzing about the event. With this, allow me to give a brief history of Earth Day and refer you to bloggers around the world for their thoughts, contribution and their celebration of Earth Day.

According to Earth Day Network:

Earth Day — April 22 — each year marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970.

Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest “to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda. ” “It was a gamble,” he recalls, “but it worked.”

Earth Day 1970 turned that all around.

On April 22, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Denis Hayes, the national coordinator, and his youthful staff organized massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values. Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. The first Earth Day led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species acts.

Earth Day 1990

As 1990 approached, a group of environmental leaders asked Denis Hayes to organize another big campaign. This time, Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting the status of environmental issues on to 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.

Earth Day 2000

As the millennium approached, Hayes agreed to spearhead another campaign, this time focused on global warming and a push for clean energy. Earth Day 2000 combined the big-picture feistiness of the first Earth Day with the international grassroots activism of Earth Day 1990. For 2000, Earth Day had the Internet to help link activists around the world. By the time April 22 rolled around, 5,000 environmental groups around the world were on board, reaching out to hundreds of millions of people in a record 184 countries.

Philippine Celebrations

PMAP

PMAP, or the People Management Association of the Philippines thru its CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) Committee sponsored the 1st Earth Day celebration at Plaza Roma, Intramuros, Manila. This was participated by different companies and the activity includes feeding of the street kids, mass celebration, fun run, walkathon, Miss Earth presentation, live band performance and arts competition. Check the rest of the pics here.

SM Cinema

On Earth Day, April 22, 2007, SM Cinema (the largest Theater and Mall operator in the Philippines), together with Department of Environment and Natural Resources, Earth Day Network Philippines, and Magnavision, sponsored free screenings of “An Inconvenient Truth” at 1PM, 3PM, and 5PM. Details here.

I also heard over the radio that an environmental concert is being held, as of this writing, along the banks of Marikina River.

There may also be other Philippine celebrations that I’m not aware of, I will update this post as soon as I find activities that are blogable.

What about you, what did you do on Earth Day?