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Since the 1970s, Earth Day has been celebrated around the globe to raise awareness about the environment. Learn more about the importance of Earth Day with Associate Professor of Religion and Environmental Studies Kiara Jorgenson ’02, the Martin E. Marty Chair in Religion and the Academy.

What is the history of Earth Day?
The first Earth Day took place in the United States on April 22, 1970, and is still regarded as one of the nation’s most effective grassroots efforts. It was established in the wake of rampant industrial pollution, with headline events such as Cleveland’s burning Cuyahoga River and the 1969 Santa Barbara Oil Spill. The event was also informed by growing public awareness of environmental harms through accessible works like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, a 1962 bestseller that exposed the ills of DDT, an insecticide that was widely used in agriculture in the first half of the 20th Century. Interestingly, Earth Day wasn’t originally intended to be a national event like the Vietnam Moratorium, which took place in Washington, D.C., months earlier. Instead, it was supposed to be a series of university teach-ins focused on reaching young voters. 

On that day in late April, over 20 million people gathered in cities across the nation to protest and organize. Much like the recent Fridays for the Future movement, Earth Day was propelled by visionary youth. St. Olaf students were among the young adults from more than 2,000 colleges and universities who participated. 

In the words of Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson, who, with Harvard dropout Denis Hayes, is credited with leading the charge, “It was on that day that Americans made it clear that they understood and were deeply concerned over the deterioration of our environment and the mindless dissipation of our resources. That day left a permanent impact on American politics. It forcibly thrust the issue of environmental quality and resources conservation into the political dialogue of the nation.” 

It’s important to note that many communities of color were raising the alarm well before 1970. Their concerns focused more on environmental disparities than on the preservation of wild spaces and natural resources. The Civil Rights Movement was always environmental in scope. On the day before he was assassinated in April of 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at a sanitation workers’ rally in Memphis, Tennessee, decrying the exposure of black bodies to toxic waste. Months later, a group of Puerto Rican and Haitian neighbors in Harlem organized a “garbage offensive” to insist on public health requirements for all New York City boroughs. These are just a few examples from decades of environmental justice work that predated the first official Earth Day. 

How do people celebrate Earth Day?
People celebrate in many different ways, both big and small. Many still march and take to the streets. In recent years, we have seen the Citizens March for Science on Earth Day and multiple rallies on topics such as climate justice. Others participate in community gardens and area recycling/compost facilities, clean up local watersheds, or plant trees. Some notable international events have taken place on the day, too. In 1990 a group of climbers reached Mount Everest’s Base Camp to remove two metric tons of debris left by earlier expeditions. In 2012 millions of people in China concerned about air quality traded in petrol transportation for bikes, marking the largest mass cycling event in history. Earth Day also saw the signing of the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement and, in 2017 a group of French and Italian scientists celebrated by archiving ice cores from rapidly melting glaciers, thereafter launching the Ice Memory Foundation. 

Why is Earth Day relevant in our society today?
I appreciate how Earth Day rallies people around a shared cause. It still has the potential to bring folks together to work for the common good. This seems especially important today, because our communities are fractured and divided in consequential ways. We’re less practiced in working across the political aisle. Seeking to address big global problems with local impacts — such as access to clean water and equitable energy use — requires multiple stakeholders with diverse kinds of knowledge. 

Arguably, we’re standing on the precipice of an artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, which makes the principles extraordinarily relevant today. How will we reconcile the ecological costs of these useful large language models and the like? In 1970 the concerns had more to do with oil-shellacked sea mammals and poisoned soils. Thanks to policies that emerged after the first Earth Day, we’ve made strides on some of these fronts, but we’re staring down entirely new challenges that require similarly large-scale efforts in education and advocacy. The need to listen to Earth’s voice hasn’t diminished. It’s intensified. 

Earth Day is only one day a year. How can people celebrate it year-round?
This is a really important question, because any meaningful environmental change will come only through the sustained, collective will of humanity. An annual day won’t reverse the effects of decades of self-absorption, extraction, and consumption. We have to get to the root of these habits of mind, and we do that through daily attention with the support of the community. As a rule, we humans act ethically toward things to which we are connected. As the celebrated conservationist Aldo Leopold rightly noted, we can only love what we first know. 

To apply that idea, a very concrete way to celebrate Earth Day every day is to grow in wonder right where you find yourself. Learn the tree names in your neighborhood and study the bird migration patterns. Be curious and intentional about food on your plate, and understand what it took to get it there. Consider what life exists beneath you and within you. Pause to marvel at the tenacity of nature. Walk slowly — often, and without earbuds. Allow the beauty all around to repel false narratives that a good day is a productive one and that more information is always better. Living into these forms of mindfulness is a small way to practice Earth Day 365 days a year. Together, they make a life and have the power to influence and effect change.

Through educating students at St. Olaf, how does your work in the Environmental Studies Department encourage the importance of nature in our society?
Environmental issues are complex and transdisciplinary. The ecological problems we face today require creative solutions from every discipline and multiple sectors. At St. Olaf, I help students examine why religious communities are key environmental actors and how, for better or worse, spiritual values shape environmental behavior. When it comes to caring for nature, religious communities don’t always have a good track record, but in the Environmental Studies Department, we contend that the study of religion — collectively its places, stories, people, and customs — remains a powerful force for promising cultural change. To live well and intentionally on a warmer planet increasingly marked by social strife is to know and appreciate something about religion. 

About Kiara Jorgenson
Kiara Jorgenson is the Martin E. Marty Chair in Religion and the Academy, an associate professor of religion and environmental studies, and the chair of the Environmental Studies Department. She teaches classes at the intersection of religion and environmental studies, and her academic research focuses on Protestant ecotheologies, ecofeminism, and childhood studies.  

Recently, Jorgenson published Ecology of Vocation: Recasting Calling in a New Planetary Era and edited a volume titled Ecotheology: A Christian Conversation. Along with two current St. Olaf students, she’s wrapping up Re-engaging ELCA Social Teaching on Caring for Creation (forthcoming with Fortress Press this fall).