Stuart’s Daily Word Spot: Environment.

Image via Wikipedia

As today is Earth Day, which, each year, marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970 in the USA, I have chosen ‘environment’ as my word of the day.

Earth Day commemorates the day Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, proposed the first USA nationwide environmental protest. His intention was to shake up the political establishment and force the issue onto the national agenda. At that time, Americans guzzled leaded gas in huge V8 sedans. Industry poured smoke and sludge into the environment with almost no fear of legal consequences or bad press. People accepted air pollution as consequence of prosperity. The word, ‘environment’ was heard more often in spelling bees than on the news. Earth Day 1970 changed all that when 20 million Americans took to the streets and demonstrated for a healthy, sustainable environment.
Today, Earth Day continues to inspire change on a global scale. In 2010, more than a billion people around the world took action for the 40th anniversary. Will you take part today? Will you do your ‘bit’ to protect the environment, or will old habits, scepticism fuelled by ill-informed nay-sayers, or idle self-interest allow you to continue your daily destruction of the planet on the basis that you won’t be around when the shit hits the fan? (Though that might happen a lot sooner than you dare contemplate).

If, on the other hand, you’d like to learn more, visit http://www.earthday.org/ and continue the fight for a comprehensive climate solution, clean renewable energy sources, and the expansion of the environmental movement.