50 years ago, a group of environmental organizers had no idea whether Earth Day 1970 was going to make a difference. We’re all here because it did. Earth Day proved that huge improvements are possible when we come together to say that everyone deserves a better planet.
Earth Day led to the passage of landmark environmental laws in the United States, including the Clean Air, Clean Water, and Endangered Species Acts. Many countries soon adopted similar laws, and in 2016, the United Nations chose Earth Day as the day to sign the Paris Climate Agreement into force.
Today, Earth Day is widely recognized as the largest secular observance in the world, marked because by more than a billion people every year as a day of action to change human behaviour and provoke policy changes.
Now, the fight for a clean environment continues with increasing urgency, as the ravages of climate change become more and more apparent every day.Â
As the awareness of our climate crisis grows, so does civil society mobilization, which is reaching a fever pitch across the globe today. Disillusioned by the low level of ambition following the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and frustrated with international action.
At the end of 2020, nations will be expected to increase their national commitments to the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, so the time is now for citizens to call for greater global ambition to tackle our climate crisis.
Climate change represents the biggest challenge to the future of humanity and the life-support systems that make our world habitable. Unless every country in the world steps up – and steps up with urgency and ambition – we are consigning current and future generations to a dangerous future.
Earth Day 2020 will be far more than a day. It must be a historic moment when citizens of the world rise up in a united call for the creativity, innovation, ambition, and bravery that we need to meet our climate crisis and seize the enormous opportunities of a zero-carbon future.
In honour of this milestone, Earth Day Network will present a  worldwide program of digital events and  is launching an ambitious set of goals to shape the future of 21st century environmentalism learn more here:  https://www.earthday.org/our-work/
We invite you to be a part of Earth Day and help write many more chapters—struggles and victories—into the Earth Day book.
