On April 22,1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values.

Earth Day 1970 achieved a rare political alignment, enlisting support from Republicans and Democrats, rich and poor, city slickers and farmers, tycoons and labor leaders. By the end of that year, the first Earth Day had led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.

The Earth Day theme for 2017 is Environmental & Climate Literacy. Environmental and climate literacy is the engine not only for creating green voters and advancing environmental and climate laws and policies but also for accelerating green technologies and jobs.

This Earth Day we are returning to a key strategy of the first Earth Day in 1970:  Teach-Ins

Concerned citizens from all walks of life organized teach-ins at the first Earth Day in 1970. Around the USA, they gathered to learn the facts about environmental degradation happening around them. Earth Day teach-ins helped educate and mobilize citizens across America to demand that Congress act to protect the environment. Ultimately, this activism led to the landmark Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and other groundbreaking legislative accomplishments.

Education is the foundation of progress

Using the teach-in concept, we will build an international populous to work toward the following goals:

• Build a world that internalizes environmental values and creates sustainable communities for all people.
• Mobilize a global citizenry to proclaim the truth of climate change.
• Provide avenues for local environmental action.

Support our Campaign for Global Environmental and Climate Literacy

Earth Day Network is launching a campaign to achieve global environmental and climate literacy by Earth Day 2020. We are dedicated to ensuring that every student around the world graduates high school as an environmental and climate literate citizen, ready to take action and be a voice for change. This goal is not only an enormous undertaking, it is critical and timely. The signing of the Paris Agreement is one step towards mitigating the impacts of climate change. Education needs to be a key part of this effort.

Organize Earth Day events to promote environmental education

Climate change and 21st century environmental justice are some of the world’s most complex problems. To effectively respond to these challenges, citizens must be appropriately educated and prepared. The future of technology, the jobs of tomorrow, and the policies and laws that nurture sustainability require all humans to be fluent in local environmental issues and prepared to tackle the unprecedented challenge of climate change.

Earth Day Network has created this Toolkit so that you, the environmentally-minded citizen, can create tangible change by organizing and coordinating Earth Day events in your local community.

Organize a Teach-In for your community

Earth Day Network believes that grassroots activism is the best way to build a world literate in climate and environmental science. Holding a teach-in for your community will both educate others on the destruction of the environment happening around the world and provide your community members with the tools they need to advocate for policies that safeguard the local environment. Together, these actions will add up to substantive and lasting progress on a national and global scale.

With this Toolkit, you will be able to organize an Environmental Teach-In for your local community.

Organize a Teach-In at your university

MobilizeU is an international movement of concerned and active students and administrators uniting around their common interest of environmental action in support of a sustainable future for all. College students have an important role to play in building a grassroots environmental movement.

With this Toolkit, you will be able to organize a successful Environmental Teach-In on your campus.

Educate our students on climate change and other threats to the environment

Since the first Earth Day in 1970, Earth Day Network has been a leader in mobilizing the environmental movement through education, public policy, and consumer campaigns. A key component of this effort has been our work with schools. Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders. With the goal of educating and engaging K-12 students on climate change, we have created a Climate Education Week 2017 Toolkit. This cross-disciplinary resource includes a range of activities from an energy conservation action plan to reading and discussing Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. We also provide a variety of other educational resources that can help you educate young people about environmental issues and empower them to take action.

Local Governments Can Lead the Way on Sustainability

While great strides have been made in the global dialogue on sustainability, local actions and involvement are necessary catalysts for implementing real change. We invite local leaders to participate in the annual Global Day of Conversation, a platform for leaders to engage with their communities in conversations on challenges and opportunities related to sustainability. We are asking city leaders around the world to host a roundtable event organized around environmental education and issue a 2017 Earth Day Proclamation. By using Earth Day to call attention to this subject, Earth Day Network hopes to increase awareness about the importance of environmental education and spur progress towards global environmental and climate literacy. A worldwide discussion of environmental education could also shed light on successful local initiatives that are capable of replication in other cities, states, or countries.

Earth Day Network has created this Toolkit to facilitate local government participation in the annual Global Day of Conversation.

The History of Earth Day — celebrating the birth of the modern environmental movement

The first Earth Day in 1970 gave voice to an emerging awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment, and links between pollution and public health. Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, deemed that air pollution could no longer be accepted just as the smell of prosperity. No longer could the industry sector belch out smoke and sludge, with little fear of legal consequence or bad press. No, Nelson reckoned that the status quo must be changed.

It was time that environmental protection be forced onto the national political agenda. On April 22, 1970, Nelson’s idea for a national day to focus on the environment was realized. Twenty million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values. By the end of that year, the first Earth Day had led to the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts.

Learn more about thehistory of Earth Day.

This Earth Day and beyond, let’s educate our communities on climate change and inspire action in defense of the environment.  #EarthDay2017

* Your pledge will be counted in Earth Day Network’s “A Billion Acts of Green” campaign.  Learn more about thiscampaign.