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Apr 21, 2020 · Earth Day turns 50 today. The original wave of coast-to-coast demonstrations in 1970 not only transformed American priorities, leading to landmark legislation like the Clean Air Act, but helped...
- Overview
- 2020: EARTH DAY TURNS 50
Many countries have cleaner air, water, and land. But we face a rapidly warming climate, rising extinction, and other challenges.
This story is part of our special issue on Earth Day. Read the rest of our stories here.
Since the first Earth Day in 1970, the United States and nations around the world have made significant progress in protecting the environment.
However, there is much work to be done, and new challenges have emerged. In this timeline, we examine the progress—and the setbacks—over the past 50 years.
1970: World population reaches 3.7 billion.
1970: First Earth Day
This story appears in the April 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.
When millions of people around the world gathered on April 22, 1970 to celebrate the first Earth Day, the future seemed precarious. Some of the bleakest predictions involved extinctions, starvation, pollution and empty oil wells.
Apr 22, 2020 · Her decision was made on the first Earth Day — April 22, 1970 — when she was one of roughly 20 million Americans who participated in some of the day’s 12,000 events raising awareness of...
Apr 18, 2022 · Flash back to the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. The dangers of air and water pollution were front and center in the nascent American environmental movement. At the time, with vehicle and industrial emissions running rampant, many American cities were choked with smog .
Apr 17, 2020 · In April 1970, the first Earth Day engaged millions of people in thousands of events around the US. Those events reflected the emergence of a new form of environmentalism. Many of the themes present 50 years ago persist, but in the US environmental issues have become more politically polarized, and it is unclear whether such value conflicts ...
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Dec 20, 2019 · This past decade has been marked by devastating extreme events, including heat waves on land and in the ocean, record rainfall and flooding, massive fires and heat-charged hurricanes. Communities around the world are already living with the impacts of just 1 degrees C (1.8 degrees F) of warming; our climate will only become deadlier and more ...
