How Everyday Can Be Earth Day
In the late 1960's and early 1970s, the words environmental and green were hardly the buzzwords they are today. Back then, there were no catalytic converters, no smog emissions, none of the checks we have on automobiles today.
In fact, most of the vehicles on the road had smoke-belching V-8 engines under the hood, ran on filthy leaded gasoline and got some really bad gas mileage too boot. The freeways were clogged with traffic, each car a mini-smokestack on wheels.
In 1970, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson, proposed the first nationwide environmental protest to, as he said, "shake up the political establishment and force this issue onto the national agenda."
On April 22, 1970 the first Earth Day was celebrated, with more than 20 million Americans taking to the streets to demonstrate for a healthy and sustainable environment. Out of that first Earth Day came the creation of the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water and the Endangered Species acts. A slew of environmental causes and movements came from that one day.
Cut to 38 years later and the American environmental movement has come a long way, yet the same issues keep popping up, but this time, things are looking much more dreadful.
Look at any newspaper, website or click on the television and you'll hear how we are facing a catastrophic climate crisis due to global warming. But it's hard to know what we as individuals can do to help change the way things are going.
In honor of Earth Day 2007, Yahoo! Autos put together a primer on what you can do to help, what's being done by the automotive industry and what's to come in the future.
Of Earth Day, Nelson remarked after the first event, "It was a gamble, but it worked."
