Google joins Earth Day celebration with flower-themed Doodle

Internet giant Google on Sunday joined the world in commemorating Earth Day with an animated flower-themed doodle. Visitors to Google's homepage (www.google.com) were greeted with an animated image of flowers blooming and spelling out "Google."

As in past doodles, clicking on the doodle would take the visitor to a Google Search Results page, this time for "Earth Day." Earth Day started on April 22, 1970, at the height of hippie and flower-child culture in the United States. "At the time, Americans were slurping leaded gas through massive V8 sedans. Industry belched out smoke and sludge with little fear of legal consequences or bad press. Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. 'Environment' was a word that appeared more often in spelling bees than on the evening news," noted EarthDay.org. Yet, it said the publication of Rachel Carson's New York Times bestseller "Silent Spring" in 1962 had raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment and public health. Earth Day 1970 capitalized on the emerging consciousness, channeling the energy of the anti-war protest movement and putting environmental concerns front and center. Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, then a US Senator from Wisconsin, thought of the idea after witnessing the ravages of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. "Inspired by the student anti-war movement, he realized that if he could infuse that energy with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution, it would force environmental protection onto the national political agenda," it said. "Senator Nelson announced the idea for a 'national teach-in on the environment' to the national media; persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair; and recruited Denis Hayes as national coordinator," it added. On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. "Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values," it said. In 1990, Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage. Earth Day 1990 gave a huge boost to recycling efforts worldwide and helped pave the way for the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Also, it prompted then President Bill Clinton to award Senator Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1995) – the highest honor given to civilians in the United States – for his role as Earth Day founder. Earth Day 2000 used the Internet to organize activists, and featured a talking drum chain that traveled from village to village in Gabon, Africa, and hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, DC. — LBG, GMA News