It’s a small world, this Earth of ours

||| FROM SAN JUAN MAKERS GUILD |||

Earth Day is an opportunity to honor this remarkable world, our home, the blue planet. The Earth Day Orcas event combines the forces of dozens of groups, artists, musicians, authors, scientists and visionary leaders.

Click a topic below to learn more about the Saturday, April 22nd activities that welcome your participation in promoting solutions to local and global challenges. Join us in person, or in spirit, this is a fertile time to dream the better world.

Art and Music

Innovation Lab

Ecology

Kids & Families

Spoken Word

It Takes a Village!

Full Schedule

Main event location is 218 Main at Emmanuel Episcopal Church – see Base Camp table in Parish Hall for activity details and directions. Innovation Lab location is at Odd Fellows Hall on 112 Haven Lane. Additional parking available at the Community Church on Madrona.

Note: Due to weather, the Eco Fair is moving into the Parish Hall. Family activitIes are in Benson Hall. Music and Poetry are in Main Chapel.

We recommend the Tide Walk at 11 a.m. as likely better weather.

For everyone’s health and safety, masks are requested indoors.

The Origins of Earth Day

On January 28, 1969, a well drilled by Union Oil Platform A off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, blew out. At the time of the Santa Barbara Channel Oil Spill, it was the largest oil spill in U.S. waters, spewing more than four million gallons of oil and killing thousands of seabirds, dolphins, seals, and sea lions. Today it ranks third in size after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon and 1989 Exxon Valdez spills.

As a reaction to this disaster, activists were mobilized to create organizations and regulations that are the foundation of our environmental protections today. On March 21, 1969, President Nixon came to Santa Barbara to see the spill and cleanup efforts, telling the crowd, “…the Santa Barbara incident has frankly touched the conscience of the American people.”

During that same period, Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin saw the 800 square-mile oil slick from an airplane, which gave him the impetus to ratify a national day for environmental education, which he called Earth Day.

On April 22, 1970, over 20 million Americans attended Earth Day teach ins and gatherings across the United States.

National Impacts

Soon after these formative events, Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (1970) and a bi-partisan Congress adopted the Clean Water Act (1972), Coastal Zone Management Act (1972), and Endangered Species Act (1973).

In 1970 and again in 1999, they also greatly strengthened the Clean Air Act, originally passed in 1963. In some cases this legislation passed with nearly unanimous support.

San Juan Island Art above by Jill Bliss, Robert Dash, Eric Morris, John Raymond Berry

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