In 1970, Senator Gaylord Nelson designated April 22nd as a national holiday to celebrate the planet earth and raise awareness of environmental issues. Today, Earth Day is celebrated by 175 countries and 500 million people, making it the largest secular holiday in the world.
The effects of this global celebration can be seen in the growing amounts of conservation and environmentalist groups, raised awareness of environmental problems, and the passing of laws that limit the harmful effects of humans on the environment.
The most recent illustration of the effects of these environmental efforts is the Supreme Court decision that held the Environmental Protection Agency does, in fact, have the authority to regulate automobile emissions and power plant emissions of greenhouse gases.
Historically, the Bush administration has maintained greenhouse gases and other emissions cannot be regulated because they do not fall under the Clean Air Act as “air pollutants”. In a major rebuke, the Supreme Court has now decided that they fall well within the Clean Air Act’s definition of an “air pollutant“, and should be regulated due to their harmful effects on the environment, such as global warming and a rising sea level on coast lines.
The Supreme Court’s decision is just another marker in a year filled with the global warming debate. The popularity of movies like “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Who Killed the Electric Car?” show there is a growing trend towards conservation and environmentalism, and that the American people will not stand for the major pollution of the planet earth.
In order to see where you stand in your contribution to the harmful trends effecting the environment, please visit ecofoot.org.
To find out more about how you can take action to limit those harmful effects, please visit An Inconvenient Truth’s Take Action page.
And to learn more about the environment and Earth Day, please visit their website.
