Editorial

摘要

This Month marks the fortieth anniversary of Earth Day, so I am delighted that Adam Rome has given us an article titled "The Genius of Earth Day." The term "day," as he mentions in his introductory remarks, is in fact a well-entrenched inaccuracy: teach-ins, rallies, and demonstrations began in early March and continued into May, even if April 22,1970, is the date that is commemorated in history. Not only was Earth Day not a single-day event, it had no single rallying cry or constituency. Millions of Americans took part, inside churches, on park lawns, and in front of government buildings, collectively involving at least as many Americans as the other great movements-civil rights, anti-Vietnam war, and women's rights-of the same era. As Rome notes, Earth Day accomplished what Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin (the most prominent progenitor) hoped it would: it educated many Americans for the first time in the need to protect and preserve the global environment and helped to launch the modern environmental movement.