Congress, Disney join Earth Day

WASHINGTON, April 22 (UPI) -- The 39th Earth Day is being celebrated in the United States with everything from congressional hearings to the release of a Disney documentary, "Earth."

Organizers expected 1 billion people to participate in Earth Day events around the globe, one in seven of people on Earth, CNN reports. That's up from an estimated 20 million people on the first Earth Day in 1970.

Earth Day has also become an establishment event. The U.S. House of Representatives kicked off four days of hearings on climate change Tuesday with 54 witnesses scheduled to give their views.

This year's Earth Day also comes at a time when polls show the U.S. public, worried about the state of the economy, are less concerned about the environment -- and mostly about the threat of global warming.

The first Earth Day was created through legislation sponsored by Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis. Partly as a result of the outpouring of support for environmental issues, then-President Richard Nixon responded by creating the Environmental Protection Agency.