Celebrated every April 22, Earth Day is the largest, most celebrated environmental event worldwide.
More than 6 million Canadians join 1 billion people in over 170 countries in staging events and projects to address local environmental issues. Nearly every school child in Canada takes part in an Earth Day activity.
There are environmental challenges everywhere, as our daily actions pollute and degrade the fragile environment that humans and wildlife depend on to survive. Earth Day is our chance to remember everything we do has an impact on the environment and move towards positive actions and results.
We can have a Strong Economy and a Clean Environment
On this Earth Day the MGEU’s National Union (NUPGE) is urging Canadians to reject the false notion that a strong economy must come at a cost to a clean environment and vice versa.
The economy and environment are linked as the solutions to the climate crisis are the same measures needed to renew our economy.
A report released by the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation, Deep Reductions, Strong Growth gives the federal government a plan. The report demonstrates that Canada could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% (relative to 1990) by 2020 while growing our economy by 2% per year. In addition, these efforts would create over a million net new jobs.
We have an opportunity to galvanize Canadian ingenuity and innovation to build a clean energy economy that will create millions of new green jobs and reduce our ecological footprint.
Earth Day History
First launched as an environmental awareness event in the United States in 1970, Earth Day (April 22) is celebrated as the birth of the environmental movement.
Earth Day is a powerful catalyst for change.
The first Earth Day, spearheaded by Wisconsin Governor Gaylord Nelson and Harvard University student Denis Hayes, involved 20 million participants in teach-ins that addressed decades of environmental pollution. The event inspired the US Congress to pass clean air and water acts, and establish the Environmental Protection Agency to research and monitor environmental issues and enforce environmental laws.
In 1990, two million Canadians joined 200 million people in 141 nations in celebrating the first International Earth Day. In many countries, the global event brought pressure on heads of state to take part in the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to address issues such as climate change and the world wide loss of species.
In Canada, Earth Day has grown into Earth Week and even Earth Month to accommodate the profusion of events and projects. They range from large public events, such as Victoria’s Earth Walk (5,000 participants), Edmonton’s Earth Day Festival at Hawrelak Park (30,000 participants), and Oakville, Ontario’s Waterways Clean-up (2,000 participants) to the thousands of small, private events staged by schools, employee groups and community groups.
To learn more about Earth Day and how you can make positive change in our community, visit earthday.ca.