Barga Giardino this morning was the stage for Earth Day – an annual event on April 22 to demonstrate support for environmental protection.
This year’s theme focuses on natural processes, emerging green technologies, and innovative thinking that can restore the world’s ecosystems.
Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic is a chance to set the world on a cleaner, greener, more sustainable path, Mother Earth is clearly urging a call to action. Let’s remind more than ever on this International Mother Earth Day that we need a shift to a more sustainable economy that works for both people and the planet – UN Secretary-General António Guterres
First held on April 22, 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated globally by EARTHDAY.ORG
including 1 billion people in more than 193 countries.
In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature’s equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later a United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970.
He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event “Earth Day”. Denis and his staff grew the event beyond the original idea for a teach-in to include the entire United States. More than 20 million people poured out on the streets, and the first Earth Day remains the largest single day protest in human history.
