It started 50 years ago today. It was April 22nd, 1970 that the first Earth Day was celebrated.
It happened at a time when the debate over the Vietnam War was raging with protest demonstrations going on from coast to coast/
But on that first Earth Day, as one account put it, “celebrations took place in two thousand colleges and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools, and hundreds of communities across the country.They went outside for teach-ins and community cleanup events, in addition to marches protesting the mistreatment of the planet.
And as a writer at BuzzFeed put it this week, "Compared to protests about racial inequality or the Vietnam War, the environment at the time was seen as a neutral cause that everyone could get behind.”
Turn the clock ahead 50 years to today and we’ve seen how the environmental health of the Earth has become as divisive at times as the war in Vietnam.
Who would have thought back then that wanting to take better care of the environment would become so politically volatile as an issue?
The good news is that the environment is much better than it was 50 years ago, with less pollution.
And Om this anniversary of the first Earth Day, when the entire planet is facing a pandemic together, we all think more about what we can do to be better stewards of the world that was created for us.
As Pope Francis put it this week, God always forgives, we sometimes forgive, but the Earth never forgives.
WATCH VIDEO BELOW of Earth Day history.
(Photo credit Getty Images)