Today, April 22^nd, is Earth Day. With this, we celebrate, acknowledge, and continue our work in the environmental movement in order to help earth have a long and healthy existence. We do this in order to allow humans and all life forms on the planet to subsequently have the same. Around the world, Earth Day is commonly celebrated on April 22^nd, like it is here in the United States. However, in some places, it is celebrated on the first day of spring, at the equinox point. The first Earth Day dates back to April 22, 1970. It was organized by a Wisconsin Senator named Gaylord Nelson and a graduate student at Harvard University named Denis Hayes. The celebrations of the day consisted largely of materials that were meant to help educate those who participated. They would teach them all that they would need to know about environmental conservation.

In the first Earth Day celebration, 20 million people participated across the U.S.

This first ever Earth Day actually garnered some great success. Ultimately because of the success of the holiday and spreading the word of environmentalism, support was generated for some legislation that later took effect. In 1970 we saw an update come to the Clean Air Act and in 1973 we saw a new bill, the Endangered Species Act, pass into law.

By 1990, the cofounder, Denis Hayes, expanded the holiday to a global scale. He organized an event to celebrate and educate and included it in 140 countries. On the first global Earth Day, over 200 million people participated. Now, we continue to see Earth Day celebrated internationally.

Since the first event, Earth Day has only continued to grow.

In the celebrations that we see today, over 190 countries participate. The Earth Day Network, the main organization working with communities for the holiday, has over 20,000 business partners and organizations that it works with to create the perfect environmental event.

The modern Earth Day Network and Earth Day overall serves to achieve a few different goals. They want to broaden and expand the way people think of the environment and climate change. The want to diversify the movement to include injustices on people of color, social class, etc. and how it relates to the environment. Last, they want to mobilize their comminites.