Earth Day's Lasting Legacy: Help or Harm?
May 22, 2025
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With Earth Day having recently passed on the 22nd of April, it is important to remember its historical context. Earth Day was started in 1970, spearheaded by Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson. Senator Nelson was concerned about the state of the environment, having witnessed the oil spill in Santa Barbara in 1969. Senator Nelson became inspired by the student-led anti-war movement simultaneously occurring, and he used this growing societal consciousness to merge protests for peace with a call for environmental awareness. Thus, Earth Day began as a teach-in initiative on college campuses, though it blossomed into numerous national events, projects, and groups.
Earth Day itself is a reminder of our country’s—our world’s—long history of industrialism as well as capitalism, ignorance, and overwhelming disregard for environmental health. Now, having recently celebrated Earth Day’s 55th anniversary last month, millions of Americans participate in conservation and environmental awareness activities, such as practicing compost and recycling, planting trees, attending workshops, park and beach trash cleanups, and carbon footprint awareness, among others.
These activities have been amplified on a larger scale than ever before through various social media platforms, where creative Earth Day activities rule. While this section of TikTok and other platforms may be helpful in continuing to raise awareness about Earth Day and its necessary continuation, it appears that such a fixation on the creative approach to environmentalism can actually be detrimental. On platforms designed to promote short-lasting content, true efforts to conserve and raise awareness about climate change and environmental destruction are often confined to Earth Day itself, leading to a sense of performativity and ephemerality that does not truly serve the planet but actually promotes the false notion of progress.
All in all, social media’s approach to Earth Day presents a confusing paradox: On one hand, it offers a hopeful future for climate activists to gain traction and inspire the public. However, while having a day dedicated to the planet and ways to protect it can spread the false message that such efforts are only meant to be saturated into that one day of awareness when, in reality, the goal of Earth Day is to instill long-lasting, year-long practices of planet care.
This short-lived approach to Earth Day is not unique. All months of the year contain important awareness months, including Black History Month in February, Women’s History Month in March, AAPI Heritage Month in May, Hispanic Heritage Month in September–October, LGBTQ History Month and Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October, Native American Heritage Month in November, and many, many more. These awareness months carve out necessary times of reflection, introspection, and a critical analysis of our collective histories. At the same time, society must place a heightened awareness about the importance of continuing to remember such legacies beyond the assigned period of reflection to ensure that true progress as a larger community is possible and that we do not continue to regress each year because we have forgotten what we learned.
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