Earth Day 2015: What, Who, When, Where, Why and How

Happy Earth Day 2015!!!

 Today, most of the countries in the world are celebrating Earth Day. what is Earth Day to be exact? and when did it become so popular? Let's take a stroll down memory lane.

In 1960s, the air pollution in the United States had raised to a new atrocious level. Even though there was already a law acting on air pollution, which is the Clean Air Act, it did not give the U.S. government power to enforce low emission. Moreover, environmental issues were far from the political limelight. Thus, Senator Nelson realizing the state of its country started to act in 1963 to bring environmental issues to the national political stage. In the end of 1969, he announced about the Earth Day, he invited everyone to march on the street in the name of Mother Nature. On the day of the event, surprisingly more than 19 million U.S. citizens joined in and celebrated the day by holding protests and gathering in public places to discuss on environmental problems.

The first Earth Day had long lasting impacts for both inside the United States and abroad. One of the examples is the 1970 amendment of the Clean Air Act, which allows the federal government to set the limit of emissions from industrial and mobile sources. Moreover, the event brought spark to the born of a new set of law, called Clean Water Act (CWA). In 1990, the Earth Day went global and was celebrated by around 200 million people around 141 countries. 

Today, Indonesia might not be celebrating the day officially. However, embrace the spirit by starting something simple by throwing our trash into the trashcan and use a less bit of that air conditioner ;)