Earth Day promotes action to protect environment.

Earth Day, which takes place Friday, continues to be a day to spread awareness about current environmental issues and ask people to take action all over the world.

U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson, who wanted to bring more awareness to the issues affecting the environment, first established Earth Day in the year 1970, according to earthday.org. He saw the era he was living in, the 1970s, as a time of air pollution, lead gas, oil spills and no call for environmental protection.

Nelson decided to take action and call upon 20 million people to participate in nationwide rallies to promote a better plan of action to protect and conserve the environment.

“It’s always been about, in some sense, the environmental problems which we see. Of course, that changes from decade to decade,” Mark Stoll, professor and director of environmental studies for the history department at Texas Tech, said. “It was originally going to be just sort of a teach-in at universities about the environment, kind of an educational thing, but it spread to be community involved, and everything from picking up garbage to organizing recycling, which was really new in 1970.”

Stoll has been studying and teaching about the environment, its changes and the history of human interaction with the environment, including physical changes and extinction, he said. Many of the issues that began to affect the environment in the 1970s still affect the environment today and have even worsened.

“We still have pretty bad air pollution and water pollution. Today, I think we’re probably more concerned, especially about global warming — that’s probably the No. 1 issue,” Stoll said. “If we didn’t have air pollution, we probably wouldn’t have global warming. It’s been put back on the front burner.”

Stoll said he fears climate change is increasing at such a rapid rate because of the effects of global warming because of humans’ excess of burning fossil fuels. Scientists have been shocked by the rapid increase and could have never predicted things like it in their worst nightmares, he said.

“Hurricanes are getting worse, getting stronger, and this flooding down in Houston, we’ve always had floods and Houston’s always flooded, but we’re getting these flood events worse and more often, so this is what’s really becoming alarming,” he said.

He believes large companies like Exxon have paid millions of dollars to campaign that global warming is not happening and it is all just mass hysteria, he said, in order to keep themselves in business and not denounce their public appearance.

Earth Day has some sort of value, otherwise people would not still be celebrating it, he said, but it has definitely lost much of the impact it once had.

“Every little bit that anybody does helps,” Michelle Logan, founder oflubbockforkids.com, said. “If you help our little hemisphere in Lubbock, it’s just a chain reaction and the impact is enormous.”

Logan created lubbockforkids.com as a website for parents to find fun and friendly events and activities to which to take their kids.

Although there are no specific Earth Day events on Friday, Logan said there are several environmentally friendly events on Saturday in the spirit of conservation.

“This is the third year for the Water Expo, which continues to educate the public about water in the region and its declining availability. With this knowledge, people have a better understanding of how they can stop water waste and reduce their overall water footprint,” David Cooper, Wolfforth city councilman, said in a news release.

The Water Expo is a great way to not only teach people about how to conserve water, but more importantly teach kids, who are the future generation, they can make an impact in helping the world around them, Logan said.

“It’s getting more important to me every day because I see the impact of the environment on our kids, and I’m thinking about our kid’s kids and the future generation,” she said. “I think it’s hard for those little ones to understand that they do have a lot of power, they have a lot of power in their hands to turn off that water when they brush their teeth, little things like that empowers the children to be leaders even within their peer group.”

Earth Day is still celebrated annually and all over the world, and there are many ways someone can get involved.

There are nature activist groups everywhere people can join, and students who want to make a difference not only in the community, but also on campus, have many opportunities available to them.

Students can participate in things like the Residence Halls Association Recycling Wars, which promote more recycling in all departments across campus, groups like Red Raider Recyclers, who recycle boxes on move-in day, and organizations like the CUTE Club that promote a greener college campus.

For those students who wish to participate in events to help the environment, the CUTE Club will be having a Campus Cleanup on Friday, and students can plant on campus during Arbor Day on April 29.