Earth Day is an annual celebration on April 22nd. It is celebrated worldwide to support and recognize environmental protection. Earth Day was founded by a US senator, Gaylord Nelson. He began a completely new wave environmental protection. Nelson chose the a date between April 19th and 25th. He eventually chose the 22nd. This day was originally intended to help spread awareness to people about oil spills, pollution from power plants, toxic dumps, etc. Earth Day was first celebrated in 1970 in more than 193 countries.
It is a day to recognize the earth and John Muir’s contribution to the environment. In the wake of Earth Day, President Nixon enacted the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Act, and created the Environmental Protection Agency. People that celebrate Earth Day incentivize others to plant trees by giving out prizes. There are organizations for Earth Day. One of them is the Arbor Day Foundation. John Rosenow founded the foundation in 1972 in Nebraska. It is the largest non-profit foundation for tree planting, their mission is “to inspire people to plant, nurture and celebrate trees.” In the foundation, there are programs such as Tree City USA. The goal of the program is to show the importance of urban forestry. This environmental conscience eventually led to a different holiday, Arbor Day.
Arbor Day is celebrated differently in some countries because people have to find the perfect climate and the suitable planting season. On the first Arbor Day, people planted about 1 million trees. It all started with a Nebraskan journalist, J. Sterling Morton. He first advised his readers to take of trees, and then, he eventually proposed "Arbor Day", an official tree planting day, at a State Board of Agriculture meeting. Nebraskan Governor, Robert W. Furnas approved the proposal in 1874.
The actual date of Arbor Day has been moved several times. When it was first made official in 1874, it was observed on April 10th. Then in 1885, it was moved to April 22nd, Morton’s birthday. But as of now, the most common day to celebrate Arbor Day is the last friday of April; and this year, it happens to fall on April 28th.
Earth Day is for highlighting worldwide problems, but Arbor Day focuses on trees only. Both of these days help the earth and remind us to care for our surroundings. Earth Day spreads awareness on the big scale while Arbor Day forces us to go small and appreciate a single thing, trees.
Henry Xie