Kansas City will celebrate the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day with a week of environmental events. The 2020 Earth Festival, or EF20, will run Saturday (4/18) through Sunday (4/26), with opening events held on April 18th at the Kansas City Plaza Library.
The idea of Earth Day was proposed at the 1969 UNESCO conference in San Francisco as a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to be celebrated on the northern hemisphere’s first day of spring. U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson subsequently founded Earth Day as an annual day of environmental education, first held on April 22nd, 1970, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom award for this work. In 1990, Earth Day went international and was celebrated with events in 141 countries. Today, Earth Day events are held in 193 countries and , in recent years, has has been marked by the signing of the Paris Climate Accord and the March for Science.
Opening events for EF20, held on April 18th at the Kansas City Plaza Library, are free and open to the public. These events include a Climate Fair where you can visit with environmental groups & businesses from throughout the region, a Speakers Forum where you can hear from climate activists and concerned political figures, and the Climate University where you can attend a wide range on one-hour environmental presentations.
Visit www.ClimateGKC.org/EF20/ to learn more and subscribe to the Climate Digest for the latest updates.
All climate and environmental groups are invited to participate in EF20. Email [email protected] for details.
