Earth Day 2014: How It Became a Global Environmental Event
Gina McCarthy, EPA chief, talks about Earth Day and how it became a global environmental event that on April 22 will include a billion people.
More than a billion people around the world will celebrate Earth Day on April 22, 2014—the 44th anniversary of the annual day of action.
Earth Day began in 1970, when 20 million people across the United States—that's one in ten—rallied for increased protection of the environment.
"It was really an eye-opening experience for me," Gina McCarthy, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency administrator, who was a self-described self-centered teenager during the first Earth Day rallies, told National Geographic. (See pictures: "The First Earth Day—Bell-Bottoms and Gas Masks.")
"Not only were people trying to influence decisions on the Vietnam War," she recalled, "but they were beginning to really focus attention on issues like air pollution, the contamination they were seeing in
