Science World® celebrates Earth Day! April 22 is Earth Day. What are you going to do to help save the planet?

Science World, April 16, 2007 by Patricia Janes

The first Earth Day took place 37 years ago. The event was a call to action: The planet was in trouble and it needed help.

Just one year earlier, on June 22, 1969, Ohio's oil-polluted Cuyahoga River had caught fire. And that wasn't the first time for a waterway to ignite. Similar scenes were taking place on the Buffalo River in New York State, and the Rouge River in Michigan.

Concerned citizens banded together on the first Earth Day in 1970 to demand a change in the government's response to polluters. Soon after, the Clean Water Act was put in place with a goal of cleaning up the country's waterways. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), approximately 60 percent of our lakes and rivers are safe for swimming and fishing today, compared with just 36 percent in 1972.

This Earth Day, people around the world will celebrate the environmental gains made so far and set fresh goals. Your generation faces new challenges: global warming, destruction of rain forests, and loss of species, to name a few. But you can make a difference.

In this issue, Science World takes a look at what young people are doing to protect the planet. For instance, Bobby Ungwiluk, a teen from St. Lawrence Island, Alaska, is spreading the word about the threats of global warming (see p. 8). And this fall, students from around the globe will gather in Australia to race the environmentally friendly cars that they've built (see p. 12).

What can you do to help the planet? Check out Science World's list of Earth-friendly actions (p. 18). Then, go to www.scholastic.com/earthday to share your Earth Day plans with other teens.

--Happy Earth Day, Patricia Janes, Editor