The 1st Earth Day was celebrated April 22, 1970.
Today, more and more people are calling 4/22...
SPACESHIP EARTH DAY
Earth Day was founded by Wisconsin's U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, Earth Day is considered by many the birthday of the modern environmental movement. Senator Nelson explains the first Earth Day was engineered "to shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda." "It was a gamble, it was a protest," he recollects, "and it worked."
Earth Day was popularized globally by United Nations Secretary General Thant when he spoke of Spaceship Earth on Earth Day March 21, 1971 at the ceremony of the ringing of the Japanese Peace Bell: "May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life."
Participant in Earth Day, 1970.
Photo: EPA History Office |
1970 was a year when North Americans were polluting our atmosphere the fastest by using leaded gas. While adding lead to steel creates a great alloy graphite-steel, adding lead to gasoline prevents engines from knocking. Leaded gasoline also accelerated GLOBAL WARMING faster than anything else humans have concocted. We might all be heartened to remember how quickly leaded gasoline went away after we realized it was sickening to Spaceship Earth.
In 1970, air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Environment was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news. Seriously.
Earth Day 1970 turned that all around and began the modern environmentalism movement.
Earth Day + Spaceship Earth = Spaceship Earth Day
Spaceship Earth is a term expressing how we're all on the same planet and how pollution doesn't relegate itself to its nation of origin. The term is frequently credited to R. Buckminster (Bucky) Fuller, the most effective propagator of the meme Spaceship Earth.
Bucky Fuller was popularizing a term coined in 1965, by Adlai Stevenson. In July 9, 1965 Stevenson spoke on behalf of The United States to the United Nations, "We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil." On July 14, 1965 Adlai Stevenson mysteriously and suddenly died of a heart attack. The CIA has formally denied any connection with his sudden death.
1966, Spaceship Earth became the title of a book by a friend of Stevenson's, the internationally influential economist Barbara Ward. 1966, Kenneth E. Boulding titled an academic essay, The Economics of the Coming Spaceship Earth, warning Americans about our "cowboy economy." David Korten forwarded the "cowboys in a spaceship" meme in his 1995 book When Corporations Rule the World.
"Spaceship Earth" was most effectively popularized by R. Buckminster Fuller's 1969 book Operating Manual Spaceship Earth, partially to popularize the dangers he saw of over reliance of non-renewable resources like Fossil Fuel: "...can make all of humanity successful through science's world-engulfing industrial evolution provided that we are not so foolish as to continue to exhaust in a split second of astronomical history the orderly energy savings of billions of years' energy conservation aboard our Spaceship Earth. These energy savings have been put into our Spaceship's life-regeneration-guaranteeing bank account for use only in self-starter functions."
Bucky had an idea or three about how we might save the planet...
Step 1) Popularize The World Game.
Step 2) Build a GLOBAL ENERGY NETWORK across hemispheres that transports electricity created by local renewable resources, because hemispheres have an energetic disadvantage during winter months and they become especially vulnerable to hegemonic influences during these seasons.
Step 3) Give clean drinkable water to every human on Spaceship Earth because it is humane and the process of getting clean drinkable water to every human on our planet will dissolve the imaginary boundaries enough to facilitate global cooperation.
To the people who died to plan this flag in our calendar, we salute you!
Learn Bucky's NOT-SO-SECRET Plan... http://BuckySecrets.com
YESTERDAY?
