It seems that a lot of effort has been placed in the celebration of our planet, Mother Earth.
In the United States, the ‘Environmental Protection Agency‘ was created to assure that norms and regulations were put in place to do this country’s part in the worldwide effort to protect this planet.
At the time of this writing, it looks like all those efforts are in the process of dismantling by the current EPA top official in association with the Executive branch of the current government.
That cannot be allowed. Grassroot efforts must be undertaken once again to assure that Mother Earth is protected.
“We need the tonic of wildness – to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground. At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be infinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”
I remember the establishment of this day. I took a summer class in college all about the environment in my country, Puerto Rico. I bought books, I read them all. I became aware of Bill McKibben (The End of Nature), Jeffrey Hollender (How To Make the World a Better Place), The Earthworks Group (50 Simple Things You Can Do series) and many more.
I was young, idealistic adult and a believer that my generation would change things.
As I look back today, it saddens me to see that I was wrong.
More than ever, there’s a lot of work to do today.
Earth Day 1970, an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems, is celebrated in the United States for the first time.
Millions of Americans, including students from thousands of colleges and universities, participated in rallies, marches, and educational programs.
Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin, a staunch environmentalist who hoped to provide unity to the grassroots environmental movement and increase ecological awareness.
“The objective was to get a nationwide demonstration of concern for the environment so large that it would shake the political establishment out of its lethargy,” Senator Nelson said, “and, finally, force this issue permanently onto the national political agenda.”
Earth Day indeed increased environmental awareness in America, and in July of that year the Environmental Protection Agency was established by special executive order to regulate and enforce national pollution legislation.
Summer solstice 2017 in Northern Hemisphere was at 12:24 AM on Wednesday, June 21, 2017
All times are in Eastern Time.
~SUMMER SOLSTICE~
The summer solstice (or estival solstice), also known as midsummer, occurs when a planet’s rotational axis, or geographic pole on either its northern or its southern hemisphere, is most inclined toward the star that it orbits.
On the summer solstice, Earth’s maximum axial tilt toward the Sun is 23.44°. This happens twice each year (once in each hemisphere), when the Sun reaches its highest position in the sky as seen from the north or south pole.
“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.”