Earth Day Network's Worldwide Campaign is sending letters inviting 21,000
groups in 160 countries to organize for Earth Day 2000. The invitations
and accompanying Call to Action are going out in thirteen languages:
Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Polish,
Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
You can help EDN's Worldwide Campaign by:
1) Inviting your international friends to participate in Earth Day (please
forward the following letter).
2) Collaborating with your partners abroad to use Earth Day as an
organizing tool.
3) Letting us know about key international groups we should contact.
4) Volunteering to help with outreach efforts.
For more information about international plans for Earth Day 2000, please
contact Mark Dubois at 206.264.0114 x203 or mdubois@earthday.net.
Dear Friends,
We invite you to participate in an international movement to place
environmental concerns and action at the top of the world's agenda for the
21st century.
Despite many important victories, we continue to face an unprecedented
array of perils: unhealthful air and water, vanishing species and wild
places, explosions in population and consumption, global warming, toxic
wastes, collapsing fisheries and the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
No community can solve these problems alone. To address them, we must
mobilize public and institutional will to a degree far beyond what we have
ever seen.
In 1970, over 20 million people participated in the first Earth Day. In
1990, 200 million people in 141 countries made Earth Day the largest
organized demonstration in history. Now the new millennium offers us the
opportunity to reconsider humans' relationship to the Earth and to each
other. On Earth Day 2000, citizens around the world will join together in
common cause to demand far-reaching and enduring action to reverse our
deepening environmental crisis.
Earth Day, April 22nd, can be celebrated in any way that honors the
environmental passions and challenges of your community. Each country,
city, neighborhood, and school will highlight its own issues as part of a
larger campaign expressing the public will to create a sustainable society.
We invite groups to use Earth Day as a platform for connecting with each
other to launch campaigns on the critical issues of our time.
In the United States and many other countries, Earth Day 2000 will
highlight the need to replace polluting fossil fuels with clean, renewable
sources of energy. We welcome all groups to join us in this energy
campaign. We will also facilitate networking to launch campaigns on other
millennial issues.
If you would like to organize or participate in Earth Day 2000, please send
us the enclosed card immediately. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Mark Dubois
International Coordinator
A CALL TO ACTION
We are at the threshold of a new millennium -- faced with a rare
opportunity.
We invite you to join us in making Earth Day 2000 the beginning of a new
chapter in the environmental history of the Earth.
Human history is full of important accomplishments. Our ancestors have
left awesome achievements, material and spiritual, for us to enjoy.
Yet we have also inherited enormous challenges. For the first time in
history, humans have the power to alter the entire planet. We are changing
the climate, triggering an epidemic of extinctions, drilling holes through
the ozone layer, reproducing and consuming beyond the world's carrying
capacity, and maintaining an arsenal of weapons capable of causing more
destruction than an asteroid collision.
Now it is our turn to choose our legacy. Working together, we can end the
world war we are winning against the planet and ourselves. A vibrant,
healthy planet with flourishing human communities can be our gift to future
generations.
We invite you to begin organizing for the largest demonstration on the
planet.
On April 22, 2000, the millennial Earth Day, hundreds of millions of people
will join in actions to create a sustainable global environment. Earth Day
2000 will call for tangible results and far-reaching policies to protect
the environment. It will enlist a new generation of environmental
activists, building alliances that transcend the boundaries of countries,
continents, and cultures. It will galvanize the sort of broad, deep
support that makes tough choices politically possible.
We cannot afford to waste time complaining, avoiding, denying, or fighting
each other.
Together, we can create a positive future.
Earth Day's Precedent
Earth Day began in the belief that people, working together, can accomplish
extraordinary things. Earth Day is unique in that it links citizen
activists around the world with each other while inspiring action on
personal, community, national, and international levels.
On the first Earth Day in 1970, 20 million citizens in the United States
came together to create a national environmental agenda. Within two years,
the country's main environmental agency had been created. Important laws
to clean the air and water and to protect rare species had been adopted.
On Earth Day 1990, over 200 million people in 141 countries on every
continent participated in celebrations in their communities. The
mobilization of citizen groups that started with Earth Day 1990 empowered
citizens, linked non-governmental organizations (NGOs) globally, and
pressured heads of state to participate personally in the UN Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro.
Since 1990, Earth Day has been embraced by citizen groups the world over as
an international citizens' day. In Canada, Japan, France, and many other
countries, national offices coordinate Earth Day activities. In Eastern
Europe, the Regional Environment Center reports that most of its 2300
affiliates organize yearly for Earth Day. We look forward to connecting
with those groups who have already been using Earth Day as an organizing
tool, and with those who are ready to begin doing so.
Earth Day Celebrations and Actions
Earth Day is celebrated in diverse ways. In 1990, Earth Day ignited
environmental imaginations in France, where participants formed a 500-mile
human chain along the Loire River, stretching across the country, to honor
one of Europe's last clean rivers. In Asia, an international team of
mountain climbers from China, the Soviet Union and the U.S. picked up the
more than two tons of trash left on Mount Everest by earlier expeditions.
Five thousand Italians staged a roadway lie-down to protest car fumes. In
Haiti, Earth Day was officially declared a National Holiday. In Jordan,
10,000 students joined a national cleanup. In Tokyo Bay, 35,000 Japanese
environmentalists gathered on Dream Island, an island made of garbage, to
set up a temporary recycling center. To learn more about Earth Day in 1990
and years since, see http://www.sdearthtimes.com/edn/calendar.
Join Earth Day 2000
Earth Day 2000, the 30th anniversary of Earth Day, will use grassroots
organizing and cutting-edge technology to educate, empower, and inspire
actions that protect the public interest.
Earth Day will create global networks that connect activists together. It
will prod organizations to think more ambitiously about the immensity and
urgency of their work.
Connect your efforts with those of other activists to create a global force
for change.
