Earth Day is Not a Celebration, by Kenn Orphan

Plastic Ocean

Image by Kevin Krejci via Flickr

by Kenn Orphan
Writer, Dandelion Salad
Halifax, Nova Scotia
April 23, 2022

The first Earth Day was in 1970. It came about as a response to a major oil spill off of Santa Barbara, California, in 1969. This, along with Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring which documented the devastation caused by the pesticide industry on birds and other wildlife, the end of the Vietnam War, and the famous 1968 Earthrise NASA photograph of the earth from the moon, galvanized millions of people to protest the destruction of our biosphere caused by war and powerful industries. More than 20 million people took to the streets that day, making it still the largest single-day protest in human history.

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